


Heading Home

by Nixf



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Episode: s02e13 Friendship Hates Magic!, Family, Family Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Home, Homelessness, Light Angst, Magic, Non-canon with Nightmare on Killmotor Hill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-09-07 14:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 32,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20311183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nixf/pseuds/Nixf
Summary: After her return from the shadows, Lena tries to head home and finds it harder than she thought. Family-focused story on Lena trying to find her place and purpose in her new lease on life. Of course, sometimes things can be much more complex that they need to be.This diverges from canon after the episode 'Friendship hates magic'





	1. Chapter 1

Heading back to the amphitheater from Webby's sleepover gave Lena plenty of time to ponder on what her life had become, and the result wasn't really leaving her in the best of moods. It was a fairly decent sized trek back and the quietness of the walk had put her into a rather introspective mood. For probably the first time in her life, she was actually on her own. Being alone had not exactly been a normal experience for her and she wasn't exactly sure what to feel about it all.

For the past 14 years of Lena's life, the only period where she didn't have Magica looking over her was after the magician tried to kill her and inadvertently bonded Lena's soul to Webby, a close friend of hers and the youngest duck in the McDuck home. To Lena, it hadn't been a pleasant experience to have her soul bound and banished to be an eternal shadow forever stuck following her best friend from the darkness.

In some ways, Lena did feel that being banished to mere shadows was rather freeing as it allowed her to finally be herself without having her every action and mistake being commented and criticized. Of course, it wasn't all sunshine and roses, mostly because neither of those things even existed in the shadows, but also because it was incredibly lonely to watch the world pass in front of her with every action and touch ignored by the land of the living.

Sometimes when she was in there it felt that she didn't even exist, the darkness crushing all around her with nothing to pull her back to being properly formed, and for months she honestly felt that her permanence was no longer true. And yet, despite the lonely and miserable existence, she did see some more positive aspects of the whole ordeal and rather liked the chance to finally stop spending her life worrying about magical oblivion and long-running murderous feuds. In the Shadow Realm, there wasn't really anything of substance or existence to hold her there and judge her, giving her a certain kind of wonderful relaxation that reality had so far barred her from.

Of course, it was also incredibly boring and she was soon getting incredibly restless with her only real entertainment provided by the enforced shadowing of her best friend Webby. At times the experience made Lena feel in no small part like a creepy stalker as she watched over the young duck who had once been her friend. In some respects, she was somewhat thankful that the McDucks had such insane lives that gave her a lot of enjoyment that allowed her to vicariously live through their adventures. In truth, she was well aware her mind likely would have not survived the experience had the frequent ventures not given her something to so clearly latch onto. Even an obsessed mind can fall apart without variety, and the McDucks were uniquely skilled at turning even the most mundane trips into epic adventures of varied insanity.

Naturally, it was one of these mundane activities that had allowed Lena to think these very thoughts. It had meant to be a simple sleepover between Webby and a new friend of hers, and yet it had led to the insanity of a shadow ritual that forcefully dragged Lena out of the shadows and back into the real world.

The return to reality had been rather abrupt and left her more than a little bewildered struggling to understand what had happened and what it meant. Since then she had somewhat gotten a better hang of her sense of self, however, the long walk back was bringing her more suppressed worries back to life. She had honestly never really even dared hope that she'd ever had time to return, and whatever dreams she'd had never stretched beyond getting the chance to give Webby a new hug and take a real proper breath of real air.

Lena had never really considered what she would do after her return, it had seemed like such a fantasy to even get that far, to even consider beyond such as impossibility and ponder on what would come next just didn't seem possible, and yet it happened. If there is one thing that Lena had quickly leaned about the McDuck family, it was to never exclude the impossible. With their amazingly perplexing ability to make their reality almost always work out perfectly for themselves in some of the most absurd ways possible, and if that meant that an innocent sleepover would result in Shadow rituals dragging her hollow form back into reality then she was not going to protest it.

However, this did leave her in a bit of a dilemma. She was finally where she aspired to be, with her so dearly desired freedom, but beyond that, she had absolutely no idea what she wanted to do next. With no real thought about what she would do if she finally managed to escape from Aunt Magica meant that when she finally got to live that fantasy, she found herself lacking any greater aspirations.

As she continued walking along the quiet streets of Duckburg, she briefly considered perhaps wandering the world and just getting lost in it without a plan, or maybe even forgetting the whole adventure thing and trying out what a normal life would be like with a job and a small apartment and everything. However, nothing really caught her desires and she found herself only really desiring the chance to spend more time with her only friend and eat junk food. Leaving her feeling guilty that she had been given such an impossible opportunity born of a lot of effort and sacrifice of her closest (and only) friend, and all she could do was squander it.

As she finally neared her destination, her hidden room beneath the ruined amphitheater that she unironically had called a base of operations for over a year, she was left with just one simple question bouncing around in her mind.

What was she supposed to do now? She wondered as she opened the hatchery to her room.

The amphitheater had clearly seen better days, and the concrete seemed even more worn than the last time that Lena had walked there, but at that moment she just didn't care. This was her room, her dwelling, her one shelter that she owned and controlled and would protect her.

Lena cautiously stepped down the cold concrete stairs and into the darkness of the room that had once held her every worldly possession, reaching into the darkness to hit the lightswitch by sheer force of habit. The room was cast in a pale blue glow from the single bulb that she had scrounged from the amphitheater lights a long time ago, the dull lighting still bright enough to reveal the mess of what had once been the closest thing she had to a home.

Grimacing at the mold that adorned the walls, she couldn't help shuddering at the thought of what would be growing within her refrigerator after so many months of neglect and abandonment. However, despite the mold and mess, she only had eyes for the bed that had taken so many hours to drag from the refuse pile to her refuge. It was an old mattress with more than a few lumps, and the covers were probably more holes than material by this point, but it was what she had and that was what was important.

Slumping on the bed, she cast a dispirited look around the room, taking in the faded and water-damaged posters that adorned the worryingly cracked walls. When she had last been here the posters had done a much better job at holding the mold and cracks, but time had done a much heavier toll on the building than she would have thought possible.

While it had never exactly been a home to her, it had been the closest thing she had. Sure it looked like an utter hovel at the moment, and she speculated that new lifeforms had been created in the fridge, it was hers and that was the only thing that mattered.

Groaning to herself she pulled herself back to her feet deciding that if this was going to be her real home, then she needed to at least attempt to get it somewhat livable. Webby had expressed quite a lot of interest in having a sleepover, and while she was really planning on just camping on the beach, if it rained Webby might have wanted to stay indoors, so a good cleaning was in order. Besides getting sick because she neglected to scrub down a few walls would just result in her suffering alone and being unable to meet up with Webby.

Gathering the discarded takeaway packets wasn't too much of an ordeal for her, though the fact that most of the mess was remnants of Magica's rushed meals in the final days of her revenge preparation more than slightly annoyed her.

"How is fair that I need to clean up after the witch that tried to kill me?" she bitterly asked herself, making a deliberate effort to blink away the annoying moisture that had mysteriously appeared in her eyes. "After everything she forced me to do, you'd think she'd at least have the common decency to bother cleaning up after herself, but apparently even the mere concept of cleanliness was far beneath her."

She shoved the trash into the small bin next to the entry as she eyed up the biological hazard that had once been a refrigerator filled with some of the few vices that Magica had allowed her. The milk was certainly spoilt by this point, but her real concern was the small slice of cake that she had nabbed from the McDucks many months ago that she had hoped was going to be a celebratory meal for finally gaining her freedom. She didn't care if it was stale, she just wanted to enjoy something she had spent years waiting for.

Her nose uncomfortably twisted as she opened the fridge to find the result far too predictable. The milk was clearly trying to create new life if the green mold growing on it was anything to go by, however, she was relieved to see that the container was still sealed. Cautiously she reached in and tenderly pulled out the quarter filled gallon of milk as if was a bomb about to explode. In truth, if she dropped it there was every chance that her room would no longer be inhabitable

Placing it carefully with the previously discarded waste, she looked back into the fridge and breathed a sigh of relief to see the small slice of cake still enclosed tightly in its plastic wrap. Gingerly, she reached in and withdrew her prize and sat back on her bed with it, ready to finally enjoy something that she had planned for so long.

Slowly, she peeled open the wrappings and prepared herself to take the biggest bit in her life, when she saw the obvious appearance of mold unveiled covering an entire side of the cake slice.

"Can't something, ANYTHING, go right for me for once!" She yelled before throwing the ex-treat across the room where it splattered over the concrete wall, the foul smell quickly permeating the room. Her nose may have complained, but she was beyond everything by this point and instead just collapsed back onto her bed and screamed. "Can't I just have one thing? Just one little stupid thing actually turns out in my favor. Or does fate think that I haven't had enough yet?"

Eventually, the horrid strength overpowered her sense of smell, and subsequently her sense of stubbornness, forcing her to pull herself to her feet and trudged away from the caustic stench and back outside. She barely made it two steps away from the hatchway before she slumped over on the amphitheater's edge and looked out over the ocean.

"Is this really what I fought for?" She asked herself quietly, her arms the only things still holding up her weary head as she became lost in thought. "All I wanted was the finally do something that I wanted to do, something that I planned, something that she didn't tell me to do. And this is the result."

She looked back at the hatchway, wondering whether she could even bring herself to clean it up and if she would ever want to. She looked up at the bright midday sun pounding down on her, she looked back at her ruined room, and then she looked out at the tattered clothing that poorly wrapped around her. She looked everywhere she could, but ultimately there was so fix. There was no solution. There was nothing.

It was in that instant that Lena finally gave up.

Everything hit her and she felt her vision blur as every frustration boiled up insider her until she was sobbing quietly to herself, sitting against one of the amphitheater's pillars with her feet dangling over the water that lapped quietly against the foundations of the stage.

Time passed and Lena's tears eventually grew dry, but still, the storm clouds swirled around her mind, hammering every negative deeper and deeper into her.

Discarding her plans for a sleepover, she just sat on the water's edge, wondering why her life loved to ruin her plans.

She probably would have silently sat there until the sun slept if a familiar voice hadn't called out to her, jolting her back to her senses.


	2. Chapter 2

To Scrooge McDuck, there were few things more relaxing than to arrive back home from another successful adventure with the loot that came alongside it, however, getting the opportunity to properly tally up his richest came in close. Glancing at the tired trio of brothers behind him, he was quite impressed that they had managed to stay awake through the entire night to finish the entirety of bin inventory, thankfully the overall tally from their night had even been a perfect match. Frequent counts made aligning the books that much easier on his auditors, and perfect books made his vulturistic board almost easy to work with.

"In my youth, an all-nighter like this would have never made me so exhausted" Yawning tiredly to himself, Scrooge made his way up to his front door and reached out to knock on the large oak doors, when the door was suddenly thrown wide and a small purple hummingbird trotted out straight into him.

"Oh, sorry Mr-" The young hummingbird froze and then her eyes opened wide as she took in the sight of the old adventurer before her. Despite the youngling's almost monotone voice, he could tell that she was excited the meet him. A worrying sign for him these days. "You must be Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge of the McDuck Manor and founder of far too many companies to name here, including McDuck Water and Electric. I've got so many questions I want to ask about magic with you."

"I'm sure you have any questions, but let's start with one of mine," Scrooge told her as he gently pushed the strange bird out of his personal space with his walking stick. Happy that she was now a much more respectful distance away, he continued. "Who are you?"

"Oh, I'm Violet, a friend of Webbigail." She proclaimed, waving aimlessly back into the manor, an action that Scrooge presumed was in the vague direction of his housekeeper's granddaughter. "I was here for a sleepover as Webby wanted some help with a little occult reading. Now tell me, what do you know about the shadow war?"

"Okay, not the question I was expecting, but as a friend of Webbigal's I probably should have," Scrooge muttered to himself, eyeing up the strange girl before him, wondering what was it about him that attracted the more peculiar individuals. "I'll straight with you lass, I am not the biggest fan of magic in general and that night was not one that I want to talk about. We lost someone close to us that night.”

"Oh, that's okay. Thank you for your time, Mr. Scrooge." Violet, recognizing that the conversation was over, made a simple goodbye and trotted off down the driveway of the manor. She frowned as she trotted off, somewhat miffed that he held back so much knowledge from her, while also understanding that he had much right as Webby to not want to talk about that night.

"Why does Webbigail always attract the strangest of friends?" He quietly asked himself as he finally stepped into his home, noting that the triplets had already managed to get inside and where bragging about how many billions of dollars they had managed to play with the previous night.

"When we hit the first billion we were barely a tenth of the way through and the counting robot started breaking because it couldn't remember the numbers," Huey exclaimed to Webby, trying to shove some paper in front of her as if to provide evidence of his claim. "Gearloose had to adjust it with a hammer before it would continue."

"I think it was more him threatening it rather than fixing it," Louie cut in dryly, his arms tucked into his jacket and his eyes barely remaining open. "I'm heading off for some snooze time on the couch. Grab me if you see any decent adventures starting."

"Ah kids, if Gearloose got the robot working, it still counts as fixing it." Scrooge interrupted, smiling. There was no reason to let their little discussion get ruined by such a silly argument, besides he quite enjoyed the questionable way that they described their little adventures.

"Well his little fixing did result in the robot trying to attack us, so I'm not sure if I agree." Dewy interrupted, trying to not think about where that stupid robot tried to hide the supposed 'excess' coins. "I'm going to go join Louie, I miss sleep."

"Sounds like you guys had a bit of an adventure without me." Webby somewhat complained, though Scrooge and Huey could tell that she didn't mind.

"It was like a two out of ten compared to most." Huey tried to half-heartedly defend their exclusion of her. "I mean it was mostly counting. What about you? Have a fun sleepover?"

"Well, I also had quite a bit of fun and even better I had an almost-normal sleepover," Webby exclaimed, showing them her friendship bracelet tied around her wrist. "I got to finally learn about the shadow realm and I've got a massive surprise." 

"We already saw you somehow managed to get another friend," Huey muttered, he let out a yawn as well. "Guess I'd better go get a bit of shut-eye as well. Morning." With that, all three triplets were off trying to catch up on their missed sleep.

"Okay, have fun. I've got to go write down everything that happened last night. It was awesome." She exclaimed, fiddling with her friendship bracelet. "It w-" She cut herself, noting that the bracelet was still glowing from the previous night. "Huh. I thought that would've stopped by now."

Scrooge glanced down at the faintly glowing friendship bracelet, the blue sheen seeming glowing from inside it. Had it been anyone else with such a magical artifact on them, he would have immediately forced them to remove it, but something told him it was a mere remnant of strong magical events. Color him intrigued by the young teen's story.

"What exactly did you get up to last night?" He asked cautiously, knowing full well that Webbigail's idea of fun all too often involved fights against the undead.

"I got to go to the Shadow Realm thanks to Violet and met Lena!" Webby exclaimed as she gave a happy little hop. "It was all shadowy and cool until the Tulpas showed up. Then it was exciting as well."

"Tulpas?" Scrooge couldn't help but ask, his worry making himself somewhat louder than he intended. He marched over to Webby, horrified by what she had done. "Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to mess with shadow magic? You could have been lost in the shadows alongside Lena, and none of us would have known what happened to you. If I had known that you were going to mess with Tulpas... Never mess with magic if you don't know what you are doing lass." 

"Well you don't need to worry about that, I pulled Lena back. That's the surprise." Webby has giving Scrooge quite a disappointed expression, clearly not happy with him trying to stop her from helping her closest friend. "She's back with us and I'm not letting some stupid shadow stuff keep her away. That's why I had Violet over to help me with the more dangerous things, and the séance. She knows heaps about shadows and Tulpas Shadow things." 

Scrooge found himself at a loss for words at the news of the rebellious teenager's return. He had felt no end of guilt for pulling that poor girl into his decade-old rivalry with Magica and to find out that she had survived was a large weight from his back.

"When you say that she is back, what do you mean?" He asked cautiously, ignoring the excited yammering of his nephews as they tried to overwhelm Webby with questions of their own. "Is she a voice or a shadow, or some kind of other apparition? Or is she actually back?" 

"Nope, she's back completely. Flesh and all." Webby replied, a massive smile covering her face. "She accidentally pulled us into the Shadow Realm trying to protect us from these Tulpas things. But they just turned out to just be manifestations of her guilt. So she was able to work Violet to get us out. It was awesome. It used the power of friendship and everything. "

"Curse me kilts, so she is back?" There were some surprises that Scrooge didn't mind, and finding out that the teen who had stood up for his family had not perished was a very welcome one. The Tulpas worried him somewhat, desperate manifestations of deep emotions wasn't something he ever wanted to get near, but if they ultimately did no harm to Webbigail then it said a lot about Lena.

"So, where is the lucky lass? I've got quite a few things I want to talk to her about. Planning on an extended sleepover" He asked quietly, hoping to have a quick chat with the girl later tonight. They did have a lot to discuss after all, especially about Magica and if she knew of any information about the inevitably numerous plans Magica was brewing in the shadows waiting for his family.

"Oh she already headed home," Webby responded, frowning a bit. "Not sure why she was so eager to head there so quickly. I wanted to surprise you and granny with her return."

"I suppose she wanted to talk to her family. They would probably be very relieved to hear that their daughter is back." Scrooge mused, rubbing his chin as he pondered the strangeness that Lena embodied. "I know if Della came back I'd want to see her on my doorstep the minute she touched the ground. Please tell me she at least called her family if she stayed the night."

Webby bit her lip, wondering if she should spill Lena's secret without asking. She had been quite insistent that Webby didn't tell anyone that her only family was Magica and had headed home insisting that she just wanted a day alone to get her bearings, however, Webby knew that Scrooge would keep the secret as well. Making her decision, she pulled Scrooge into the nearby sitting room, shoving the door shut in case the triplets tried to join.

"Lena wanted me to keep this a secret, so you had better promise to not tell anyone." Webby insistent as she turned to face him. "Do you promise?"

"I swear on my family to not tell unless it needs to be said." He agreed, with a slight stipulation. "I'm here to help."

"Okay, well Lena didn't want anyone to know because she wanted to be left alone," Webby began as the two of them sat in the comfortable recliners in the room, though both were sitting on the edge in a poor attempt to hide their deep interest in the ex-shadow that was Lena. "She doesn't have any family apart from Magica and she told me that she is heading back to her underground hideout to clean up so I can come over for a sleepover tomorrow. She doesn't want anyone to know she's there because technically she doesn't own it. It is super cool though. "

"She has an underground lair? I haven't seen many remaining these days." Scrooge asked, think that it was in some ways nice to hear that Lena at least had something of her own to escape to, however, the lack of a family was much more of a concern to him. Lena might enjoy the chance to be independent, but that didn't mean that she wouldn't need any help. "Have you gotten to see it?"

"Only once, and it's more of an underground room, rather than a lair, and it's just a bedroom hidden under the amphitheater that doesn't exactly have running water. But it is pretty cool." Webby described to him, her mind straying to the fun sleepover games she could play with Lena tomorrow. "Which reminds me, I need to ask Granny if she's okay with a Lena sleepover. I've got to ask now." 

"Ah, Webbigail, before you go. Could you tell me where exactly Lena is staying?" She’d tried to save his family, it was only fair he made good on his promise. Besides, maybe she had some information about Magica’s whereabouts.


	3. Chapter 3

"There you are lass" 

Lena froze as a far too familiar voice called into the echoing amphitheater, it's aged tone digging deep into her. Out of everyone that she wanted to see at that very moment, Scrooge was not high on that list. However, despite her misgivings, she could clearly hear him slowly make his way over to her even though she had still yet to convince herself to turn and meet his eyes. 

Lena's interactions with Scrooge had been few and far between with the older duck rightly never fully trusting her, as far as she could tell. Even their last time speaking had literally been about her betrayal allowing Magica to attack the thing he held most dear, his family. Simply put, the two of them were far from friends as far as she was concerned.

_He wants something._

In Lena's opinion, there was really only one reason that he would have even bothered to travel all the way down here rather than cornering her the next time she was at the manor. It was clear to her that he didn't want her to ever go to the manor. It was the only obvious option as far as she was concerned. If he wanted to just talk to her he would have waited until she had another sleepover at the manor.

No, the reason was that he clearly wanted to talk about something he didn't want Webby to hear. This meant that there was really only one thing he was going to say, he didn't want her to spend time around his family, around Webby.

Lena wasn't going to give up Webby. Sure, after her betrayal she may not deserve Webby's presence, much less the comfort that the manor afforded. But she had given up too much over these last few months and Webby was not one thing that she was willing to give up on. Scrooge was going to have a fight on his hands if he tried to separate them. She would never admit it, but Webby was non-negotiable.

_You know what you need to do._

"What do you want, geriatric" She hissed at him, pulling herself to her feet and facing off to him. This meeting would likely not going to be pretty, but Lena didn't mind getting dirty. She had the experience, all she had to do was get him metaphorically onto his back foot and she'd be able to get him to do what she wanted."This isn't your land so why don't you turn your senile self around and leave."

Scrooge paused his steps, raising his eyebrow at her, shooting her a contemplative look that Lena felt was piercing to her soul. Well, at least he had stopped walking towards her. She folded her arms and did her best to keep a fitting frown on her face. Aunt Magica hasn't taught her much, but she had told her how to put up a proper front for an opponent who held more cards. Magica hadn't exactly intended for Lena to use it against her own aunt, but it did give her a lot of experience.

"I came to talk, that's all." He told her carefully, moving his arms out to show a lack of weaponry, though Lena knew that he didn't need anything apart from his cane to take her out. "Just a quick chat and I'll be on my way. No tricks, I swear."

"You swear. Prove it, swear on something that matters." If there was one redeeming thing she liked about Scrooge it was that he was at least a duck of his word. Sure he could be conniving and deceiving, but he did keep his promises even if they were a detriment to himself, and Lena was going to lean hard on that facet.

"I swear on my family. Just a short talk and then you'll have your peace from me." He carefully made his way closer to her so that they were no longer calling out across the amphitheater's stage. Carefully he sat down on the edge of the stage and beckoned her to sit beside him. Lena unenthusiastically complied, sitting down dejectedly beside him. He'd already gotten the upper hand back from her, so she had to improvise and get control back.

_He will betray you._

"I already know how this conversation is going to go," Lena muttered, barely audible to Scrooge. "Aunt Magica may have not being amazing to be around, but she did teach me a lot about how to survive. She also told me a lot about who you were and how you were the master of weasel words and trick contracts. She told me once she bargained with you for a magically infused crystal, but for failed to tell her it was cursed. She ended up being chased out of a city and losing the crystal."

"I've always been a duck of my word, Lena" Scrooge tried to placate the clearly annoyed teenager, confused about what had pushed her to be so incredibly antagonistic. "I do remember that happening with Magica, though I did keep my word. I gave her the crystal after all. Is it really my fault that she didn't heed my warnings?" 

"Exactly, you trick people to get the upper hand. I heard about what you did to Medusa, that mirror trick was fiendish. So how can I know you're not going to do that here." She demanded, keeping her arms crossed and refusing to even look at him. Why did he have to be so calm when he was planning on tearing one of the last few good things in her life? Couldn't he at least pretend this was an important event or something? 

"You can't lass, but I'm not here to demand you do something." Lena couldn't stop herself twitching at the mere mention of the word, but Scrooge seemingly either didn't notice or pretended not to as he continued. "I'm not here to stop you from living your life. I just want to make sure you're okay. Can we at least talk about that?"

Lena refused to even look at Scrooge, leaving the two in silence as she steadfastly refused to respond to him. The control of the conversation was yet again slipping from her fingers. This was her domain and he was the interloper. She had to get back control in some way, otherwise, she was going to lose Webby again. A few desperate plans span through her mind, each getting easily dismissed as she struggled to regain control from the annoying wise duck.

"Well if not that, then how about a subject that you're more willing to talk about, the fate of Magica?" He asked her quietly, his voice weirdly stiff to her, not that it helped that much. "I wanted to ask you about Magica and if you know of any other plans she may have brewing."

And there it was, the true reason he was sitting beside Lena and trying to act all kindly. He just wanted to protect himself. Still, it did nicely give her a rather nice bargaining chip, she just had to be careful how she approached her own demands. In truth, she did have a few ideas about what Magica might want to do next and where she would need to go to get her magic back. Was this the best way to get control?

_You need to control him._

"So you want to know about Magica's plans, right?" She began, turning back to him and relaxing somewhat. For once, Scrooge wasn't the only one holding all of the cards. "How about we make a deal?"

"Magica isn't my only concern Lena." He tried to interject, but Lena wasn't going to let him take control again, this was her domain and he was going to listen.

"You're either going to listen to this deal, or you're going to leave." She told him coldly, enjoying her moment of power over Scrooge. It wasn't often that she could demand things from those older than her and she was going to savor this. "I know you want me to do some things for you on top of this Magica stuff, and it's not going to happen. So here's the deal. You give me complete access to your manor to freely come and go and hang out with whoever I want whenever I was. If I want a sleepover with Webby you let it happen and make sure Ms. tea and crumpets stays out of the way. Oh, and you give me that stupid dime around your neck whenever we talk. If you promise to do that, then I'll tell you everything I know about Magica."

She remembered the old lesson that she'd being forced to learn thanks to Magica. Her supposed aunt had definitely been one for difficult deals and Lena had quickly learned the first rule of bargaining. Always demand more than you want so you can pretend to give up concessions you don't care about. She remembered using a similar approach to get Magica to agree to a sleepover during that whole money shark debacle. With any luck, Scrooge would be so desperate to keep his dime, the other demands will seem more minor.

"Okay, it's a deal." Scrooge's words were straightforward and Lena's mouth dropped open in surprise. That was most assuredly not how she was seeing his response and honestly, she wasn't sure what to say in response. Magica had never agreed to a deal before at least complaining about for a solid few minutes, Scrooge wasn't meant to actually agree. Before she could even respond, he had already pulled his necklace from around his neck, the dime clearly attached to it, from around his neck and held it out to her.

_Wait, don't take it yet._

There was no deception in his action, Lena could feel the power emanating from the simple dime as it sat hanging in the air in front of her face, mere inches away. Shaking somewhat she reached up to the magically imbued treasure, wondering when he was going to pull it away and renege on their deal. Why did he even agree to such an outrageous demand?

The cool metal touched her palm as she slowly closed her finger around it, unable to look away from it. Unwilling to look up at Scrooge's expression, she shakingly took the necklace in both hands and pulled it over her head. With the dime in place around her neck, she felt the hum of magical energy from it begin to vibrate in sync with the amulet embedded deep within her. The last time she had been able to touch the dime it had almost felt like a normal dime. This time she could feel the energy emanating from it, it felt amazing. Feeling a strange surge of power spread through her, she finally possessed the courage to meet the eyes of Scrooge.

"Why did you agree?" She couldn't help but ask, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. It was probably the exact opposite question lean should have asked, but to have him just freely agree and hand over his dime was throwing her for a loop. Was he playing her somehow? How would this ever work out in his favor?

Instead of responding immediately, Scrooge instead just chuckled and put an arm around her, seemingly not in a rush to ask her any questions just yet. "It's interesting that you would just assume that I have some ulterior motive." He smiled at her, Lena shuffled to make a larger gap between them. "You're right, of course. It's not really an ulterior motive, I just like to multi-task. As for letting you hold my number one dime, I trust you."

"You shouldn't." Lena blurted out before she could stop herself. Of all the stupid reasons for him to let her hold his most prized possession, why did it have to be because he was being a sentimental fool? She could deal with trickery and deception, but even fake emotional responses were far from her strengths. Why did the immodest fool have to be so good at controlling the conversation? She was meant to be the one running this, not Scrooge. "Why would you ever trust me? I betrayed you, remember."

"That's not what I remember." 


	4. Chapter 4

Lena was being incredibly stubborn and Scrooge was quickly reaching the point of uttermost frustration. She was holding his dime for kilt's-sake and she was still questioning whether he trusted her, what more could he do to prove that she was trusted. Surely she realized how important that little trinket that was now draped around her neck, even if it was drained of the power it had once possessed.

He'd acknowledged ahead of time that this conversation was never going to be all that easy, but how the rebellious teen had turned an offer of a free room and board into a game of wits and provocation was beyond him. She'd certainly been raised by Magica, and he'd known that it may have caused some level of difficulty between then, but to have her straight up distrust his every word was not expected.

It wouldn't matter how much she pushed back, however, he was a McDuck. He'd discovered the lost city of Atlantis, in comparison, to get a defiant teenager to accept some help in exchange for a little information should be a mere trifle. And here she was saying that she didn't even believe that he should trust her, and accusing herself of betraying his trust. He couldn't let this conversation down such a path, either by help or deception, he was going to help her.

"That's not what I remember." He cut in, not wanting to see her accusations continue. He wasn't overly surprised to see her glare at him, thought the edges of blue magic sparking in her eyes were not so anticipated. "You earnt my trust already when you stood beside me and faced off against Magica. From that moment I knew your character and what you held dear. So I do trust you, I trust you to do what you think is right and to fight back against things you believe are wrong."

"What if what I think is right is different from yours?" Lena was again trying to rile him up as if his decades of life hadn't taught him to hold himself with certain level-headedness. He was an experienced veteran of dealing with incredibly irritating individuals and, with the notable exception of Goldie or Glumgold, he knew better than to react. "Do you really trust me?"

Scrooge rolled his eyes, this conversation was going nowhere and it was time to get back to the real reason he came, to offer support and guidance to someone who needed it and get a bit of insight into Magica. However, her stubborn refusal to allow the conversation go anywhere approaching herself was quickly becoming a great annoyance. He couldn't help if she just shut him out.

"Yes, yes I can trust you." He amended. "However I didn't come here today to discuss trust, I came here to check on you and where you are living."

"You don't need to spy on me," She huffed, turning away and crossing her arms. He wondered if she realized how utterly adorable her 'tough girl' act really was, he knew enough to not ask. The one step forward and one step back nature of this conversation was getting annoying. "You can ask about Magica, but don't for a second think I'll just tell you everything."

"Fine." If she wanted to play hardball, he could work around that. "How about you show me where you and Magica stayed over the last year so I can look to see if she left anything behind? I've upheld my end of the bargain after all."

He could see no small amount of hesitation flick over her as she carefully considered his words. Honestly, after this he was going to see that she learned how to properly barter and bargain, Magica had done a horrible job teaching her. He had barely held up a third of his side of the bargain and here she was already considering handing over her only card. 

"Fine, I'll show you where she did her stupid scheming from." She relented, pulling herself to her feet and kicking a small wooden board on the stage to reveal the hidden trapdoor. Scrooge, naturally, had already found out where the entrance was, but getting her to show him was the closest indicator that he was beginning to gain her trust.

Climbing down the rusted ladder behind Lena, Scrooge found himself on a series of narrow concrete steps that led even further down. It figured that even something as simple as a bedroom would be deep underground when Magica was involved. She never did anything by half measure.

The steps were showing their age and had never been properly finished off and he couldn't help frowning at the damp walls. What clearly appeared to be black mold had already begun to take over the walls and they hadn't even yet reached their destination. The hallways lighting was also clearly subpar and barely provided enough illumination for them to safely navigate the irritatingly narrow stairs.

Thankfully the hallway was short and it soon opened up in a small room lite in a dull blue hue. Black mold had taken over most of the walls, the only furniture was aged beyond its respective lifetimes, and the rug had a lot of suspiciously dark stains on it. However, the most overwhelming thing of note was a rather ghastly odor that filled the room that was a particularly unpleasant mix of off-milk and damp clothing.

Despite the mess, Lena merely stepped over the mess and reached for some dark red curtains that stretched suspiciously across nearly an entire wall. She paused as she reached out for the curtains, and Scrooge could see that it was taking a very real effort for her to even reach that far. "This might not be that much help, but it was the main thing she focused on," She told him a tone of irritation rising as she still refused to even look in his direction. Scrooge wasn't sure if the irritation was with him or Magica, but it probably didn't matter.

Unwilling to see her strain herself any further, he reached out himself and shoved the curtains wide open to reveal a mess of scribbles and a wonderful diagram of Magica escaping the dime and trapping him in her place embossed in glowing green paint. Clearly, Lena had known for quite some time what Magica's plan had been, but he couldn't blame the poor girl for helping the closest thing she had to family.

"I was with her for a long time and the only way she said that her powers would ever return would be if she got her hands on this dime," Lena told him bitterly as she held the named magical token tightly within her fist, no longer willing to look at Scrooge any more. Letting out a sigh, Scrooge placed a hand on her shoulder in what he hoped was a sign of comfort to her, though judging by her flinch the touch wasn't taken so welcomely. He quickly removed his hand, better to not push it at this time. "She never said there was any other way to return her powers. The dime was her only way to return to her former supposed glory or whatever. Is that enough for you?"

"Magica regained her form that night," Scrooge told her simply, doing his best to ignore the anger that was flashing over Lean. In truth, he knew that the dime was of little value to Magica in its current powerless state. "She doesn't need that dime if she just wants to cast a few magical incantations. I doubt it even contains much power left at all."

"You're trying to trick me!" She accused him, shoving her finger straight at his face. "This stupid dime currently has more energy than Webby after a bag of marshmallows and three coffees." She told him angrily as she opened her hand to reveal his dime glowing a rather vivid blue. The waves of energy pulsing brightly within her grasp as she angrily waved it in his face." Stop trying to trick me."

"That's not from the dime, lass," he told her, chuckling. Lena let out a growl as his rebuttal, clenching the dime back into her fist, the magical aura growing brighter. Scrooge sighed to himself before reaching out to her grasp, enclosing her hand with his two. "I can prove it, just let go and give it back to me." 

Lena was glaring at him as if she could banish him far away, and with the amount of energy currently flowing through her, he knew that it was a very real possibility. Whatever trust he had earned over the last few minutes was gone and in its place was anger. "I'm not a fool. You just want to break your deal with me."

"I promise I will let you have it back, but just let me hold it." Lena finally relaxed her grip and let the dime fall back into his outstretched grip. The blue aura instantly vanishing as it left her grip, causing the teenager to stare at it with her mouth gaping ."It was reacting to your magical essence, not the other way around."

He moved it towards and away from her outstretched hand, the dime glowing a vivid blue as it passed nearby. "You're the source, not my dime." He held out the dime again but she quickly pulled away, eyeing him suspiciously.

"You never came here to find out about Magica, did you?" Lena accused him, rightly so in some regards. Magica's previous plans had never been his main concern. Of course, her future plans were, but he knew that it was unlikely that she would bother sharing it with one she deemed a mere puppet. "You still see me as some sort of spy for her, don't you? You're just here to make sure I -"

"I know perfectly well that you have no alliance with Magica." Scrooge cut her off brusquely, not willing to loop back to debating trust again. "I am here because I wanted to know if Magica had left something, and I wanted to make sure that you had a place to be. However, now that I am in here I am finding myself deciding that I can't let you live here. This is no place to live, Lena."

"Oh so now you want to tell me where I can and can't live." She angrily protested. "You aren't in charge of me, no one is anymore. If I want to live here, then there is nothing you say or do that will stop me."

"We are surrounded by mold and mildew. Surely you understand that you can't stay here." Scrooge shot back, mentally groaning as he saw the look of defiance settle across her face. This was not going the way he wanted. "I'm here to offer you a room in my home that you can stay for as long as you want."

"You mean you want to lock me up and control me." She snarled at him, sparks of magic flickering in her eyes as Scrooge saw the anger beginning to overwhelm her. This had suddenly turned much more dangerous than he was expecting, but that just made this that more interesting. Fine, if that was the way she wanted to play, then it was time to let her win and get what he wanted.

"I don't want to control you, Lena." He began, mentally flicking through the options available to him. She wanted to be in control, he wanted her to not live in this dump, and he had a few good ideas to bring that reality out. If she thought he was a manipulative cheat, then he may as well become one. "However you are right that I haven't been entirely straight with you. I do want you to stay at the manor, but it wasn't just so I could keep watch on you, or out of the goodness of my heart."

"Magica is low on power and desperate." Scrooge didn't relish the idea of deceiving a child, but tough love was sometimes required. "You're the largest source of power currently in Duckberg and she is going to know that you've returned. There will be nowhere safer than the manor when she inevitably discovers your return, and I can keep her away. I do want to protect you, and not just for my own sake."

Scrooge watched Lena's face drop as she absorbed his words. It was somewhat difficult to watch her throw such misery at herself, but it was what needed to be done. Sometimes Scrooge wondered if he deserved an Oscar for his performances. "It doesn't matter if you believe me, we both know you only have one option. You may not like it, but I will try my best to make your stay hospitable."

"So, will you come with me."


	5. Chapter 5

Lena felt the cool glass of the limousine's window press up against her forehead as she gazed out into the passing streets of Duckberg. For a moment she enjoyed the mesmerizing what that the even streets slowly passed, before remembering where she was and pulling herself away from the calming sight. She had been somewhat surprised to see Donald behind the wheel instead of Launchpad, but neither Scrooge or Donald bothered responding to her questions about it. Well Donald said something, but she had no idea what. Having Donald as the driver did result in a noticeably calmer drive, albeit slower and more boring.

She couldn't even play with Scrooge's dime as she'd stupidly given it back to him as soon as they'd left the amphitheater. She'd contemplated keeping it for longer, but Scrooge had acted as if every second without it was almost physically painful, and she didn't have that much animosity towards him. Also, the whole glowing bit had more than a little creeped her out. So with nothing to distract her, she was stuck with just her thoughts again.

Thankfully Scrooge remained silent for the drive, giving her time to get her thoughts in order after dealing with the news of Magica's interest in her and her new magically permeated nature. Having this much power flowing through her was a foreign experience to her. There had been a few times that she had gotten a chance to be a magical conduit due to Webby's suspicious competency with friendship based magic, but to be a possessor of magical energy was a completely distinct deal.

So here she was sitting in the back of a slightly dented limousine beside a trillionaire duck who had somehow managed to manipulate her into coming back to his home. Despite her misgivings, she couldn't bring herself to regret relenting and giving in to his demands. The idea of getting to sleep on a proper bed without the smell of sour milk was definitely a welcome one. However she knew that it wasn't going to be a holiday, Scrooge clearly had some sort of angle in all of this that she just couldn't work out.

His excuse that he wanted to protect her from Magica was clearly a load of manure. If anything staying in the McDuck manor would make her an even larger target of Magica, and would effectively ensure that the witch would know about Lena's return. He couldn't put his family in any more danger without trying. 

Lena briefly wondered if it was the inherent power within her that he wanted to gain, before discarding the thought. She knew from Webby that Scrooge had a heavy dislike of magic in all forms and his experiences with Magica were unlikely to change his opinion positively.

_He is trying to manipulate you._

She really couldn't work out what his angle was in all of this. Sure she might be a decent source of power for Magica's return, but she was stupid enough to trust that staying at the manor would make her any safer. It couldn't just be out of the goodness of his heart, he was nice but he wasn't the type of duck to just adopt a stray on a whim. As far as she could tell, he mostly wanted the triplets so he had someone to brag about his adventures too. No, pure generosity was not his motivation.

In truth, Lena's own reasons for agreeing to come back were rather fuzzy to her as well. A nice bed was one thing, and Ms. British would likely not let her get away with skipping some means, but to return to the manor did mean that she was going to lose a lot of her freedom. Freedom that she had spent years clamoring to attain.

The idea, that Scrooge would just step into her life and take control of it, just kept bouncing waywardly through her mind. The thought of Scrooge controlling her life, of controlling her, was distasteful. However, the idea of Magica taking control was decidedly even more disagreeable. She didn't want Scrooge to control her life, she'd had enough of being controlled to last her a lifetime, but there was one factor that tipped the scales and allowed her to swallow her worries and forge ahead.

The difference was Webby, her best friend, was in that manor. Either way she looked at it, returning to the manor was inevitable. Sure, she had entertained the idea of staying at the amphitheater on a near-permanent basis, but she knew it wasn't a realistic option. If Webby had seen even a hint of the state of her own room, Lena knew that the overzealous girl would have dragged her back to the manor anyway. 

At least if she came willingly under Scrooge's invitation it gave a better position to argue, than if she had come pleading with Webby. That didn't mean that she was going to like it, but she didn't really have that much of a choice.

Lena was jostled from her thoughts as they finally arrived at the manor, Scrooge wordlessly opening the door for her and letting her head inside without a word. She cautiously stepped through the foyer doorway, a sudden rush of wariness hitting her. Only a few hours had passed since she had last been inside, and yet everything felt different. There was a potent feeling of foreboding hanging thickly in the air and Lena swallowed nervously as Scrooge silently walked in beside her.

"Come on, Lena." Lena couldn't help flinching at the sudden words from Donald who had somehow managed to quietly enter right behind her. "I'll take it from here, Uncle Scrooge." Lena found herself been pushed out of the room by Donald, who quickly pulled her into one of the smaller sitting rooms before shutting the door abruptly in Scrooge's face. Smiling to himself, Donald turned to look at Lena.

"Alright, I got rid of the old man," Donald told Lena, leaning smugly against the shut doors. "Now, you and I are going to have a little talk."

"Who said I was going to talk to you about anything?" Lena responded angrily, eyeing the small sitting room's only window. A small part of her wanted to sit and see what the duck wanted with her, but a much larger part of her just didn't want to be here. 

She knew what Scrooge was capable of and what it took to get him riled up, and she knew that he wasn't going to hurt her. Donald was a different deal. The shadow war had shown than Donald was one over-exaggeration from taking down anyone, and his anger seemed more like possession to her. To make things worse, Lena had never really interacted with Donald apart from some polite efforts to mutually ignore each other, and most of what she had seen from Webby's shadow hadn't let her get the best handle on the duck. And now, here she was cornered in a room by him. 

"You don't have to talk if you don't want to, I just figured you might want to talk to someone who isn't here to judge you." Donald began, but Lena didn't want to hear it. Of course, he was going to judge her, who wouldn't. "I know you might think that I can't relate, and I'll be the first to say that I don't know what you went through, but I do know what it's like to have responsibilities shoved onto you unexpectedly."

_They are controlling you._

"I don't want to talk to you about how you raised the dweebs." Lena almost growled. Stupid Donald was trying to get into her head and she wasn't going to let him. Magica had tried to be nice at the beginning as well before she started not achieving the witch's goals. Lena wasn't a fool and she could recognize the signs, Donald clearly wanted to create some sort of false bond with her so he could get something out of her. "I'm here because Scrooge said that I had to. I'm not here to socialize with anyone, and I'm not here to listen to you telling me about Huey's first bed wetting experience."

"Even the chance to blackmail isn't enticing you?" Donald chuckled, seemingly unaffected by Lena's words, frustrating the young teenager. "Okay, so you don't want to talk now. That's fine. Go hang out with Webby or tease the triplets. I just want you to know the option is there and you can come to talk to me whenever you want."

With that, Donald stood aside from the door and Lena quickly took her leave. Pulling open the door with considerably more force than she had intended, Lena stepped out once again into the empty foyer. Scrooge had apparently already departed the room, giving her the perfect excuse to seek out Webby and forget this mess of an afternoon.

Unfortunately, Webby wasn't actually in her room. So, Lena found herself instead just curling up on the younger duck's bed and reading one of many hidden magic books that Webby seemed to hoard. A small part of her wondered how Webby had gotten her hands on the Grimoire Du Merlock, but a larger part of her really did not want to know. It was allegedly a heavily cursed artifact after all.

_Scrooge hates magic._

Lena couldn't help smiling at the thought of Scrooge's heavy disdain for magic, and yet here she was, a being of pure magic reading heavy occult. Of course, if he actually found out about it then Webby and Lena would both be in considerable trouble, not to mention that Webby's guardian would probably blame Lena. Honestly, she wondered how Beakly could even pretend that Lena was a bad influence when Webby was already deeply into stuff considerably darker than Lena had even gone near.

It did bring in the question of why Scrooge had been so insistent that she stay at the manor when she embodied one of his biggest aversions. She was magic, Scrooge didn't like magic, and yet he wanted her to stay and seemingly wanted to protect her. It didn't make sense. If he didn't like magic, why did he make her stay in his house where it would be nearly impossible to not see each other multiple times a day.

_They are watching you._

Lena froze as a thought suddenly hit her, it made sense. She was here because he wanted to keep an eye on her. She wasn't here for her own protection, she was here so Scrooge could watch her and protect his family from her. Okay, so maybe he had some level of trust in her to let her be mostly unobserved, assuming that she wasn't being watched right now.

Okay, so if Scrooge was going to keeping an eye on her she needed to make sure she stayed on his good side. She was magic which was certainly a point against her, and she wasn't a big fan of actually following directions, so this could prove somewhat difficult.

Lena eyed the book in front of her before groaning, shutting the aged book and shoving it under Webby's pillow for later. If Webby had been here she would have taken it off her and shoving it back within its unicorn-themed cover and tucked it back into the bookcase. She never understood why Webby insisted that all dangerous magic books needed to be hidden specifically in unicorn-themed covers and stored in incredibly specific locations. Also, she just couldn't be bothered getting up at this point.

_They don’t trust you._

If she was going to win Scrooge over to her side, then she needed to do it quickly. Beakley already didn't trust her, and Donald was probably not far behind after Lean refused to even talk with him. So she was most likely running low on time, so whatever she did needed to be something big and impressive to prove that she wasn't a danger to them. That she wasn't with Magica.

Lena didn't really have a clear idea of what she could actually do to prove to the old geezer that she was trustworthy and in no way working with Magica, but how. She couldn't just tell Scrooge everything she knew because Magica had rather annoyingly tried her damndest to ensure that Lena was kept in the dark, both literally and metaphorically.

She needed to do something that proved to the old duck that there was no deception and it was real. There was really only one way to prove, once and for all that Magica was no allay of Lena's. She was going to track down that witch and make sure that she can never return.

She was going to get rid of Magica.

She just didn’t have any idea how she was going to accomplish it. Well, that just meant it was time for some peaceful brainstorming, and she did have Webby’s nicely comfortable bed just sitting there waiting for her. She may as well make the most of the situation.

Lena sat back on Webby’s bed enjoying the chance to relax while she pondered her next steps, a small dusty journal that she’s found on Webby’s desk slowly getting filled with ideas. The small dusty journal was unfortunately also getting filled with a lot of crossed-out ideas as Lena quickly dismissed impractical ideas.

_Look at magic transfer._

Sure the idea of finding a magical McGuffin and being able to take down the magical witch without any danger or issue sounds like a fantastic idea, but Lena knew of no such McGuffin. That idea quickly got a lot of scribbles through it. This was meant to be thinking and planning time, not pointless fantasization time. If she was going to consider an idea, it at the very least needed to be realistic and not involve impossible magical artifacts. Well, if there were any impossible magical artifacts in Scrooge's garage then she would have no qualms including them in her plans, but she knew there were very few remaining.

So, that just left with her trying to remember every magical lesson that Magica had forcefully driven into her, and to try to determine if there were any stories or fables that she had let slip. Magica had spent a lot of Lena's life rambling about revenge plots and stories of magical far off energies that would help her take revenge on her supposedly greatest foe, and yet Lena could not remember a single valuable story. True, Lena had been forced to learn how to faze out Magica's pointless rants to try and maintain some form of sanity, but she'd thought that something would have remained.

She had nothing, the book had by this point accumulated twelve pages of pointless crossed out scribbles, and she was finding herself completely idea bankrupt. A large part of her was starting to feel rather exhausted, it might have barely been past noon but she was feeling strangely fatigued. Curling up on Webby's bed she promised to just close her eyes for a few moments and then get back to-

And with that, Lena slept.


	6. Chapter 6

Meanwhile, Scrooge was having a rather frosty conversation with Donald, rather disappointed in what had just transpired. He had gone to all that effort to convince Lena to return to the manor to try and get something out of her using Donald, and yet the result was far from positive.

"You were in there for barely a minute before she came storming out," Scrooge yelled at Donald, slamming his hands down on his ornate oak desk. Donald rolled his eyes at his uncle's anger. "You said that if I gave you 5 minutes alone with her you'd work out what was going on and get her to at least listen to us. Instead, she slams open the doors and goes off to hang out duck knows where and we're stuck back at square one."

"I'm working on it, but this isn't something that can be done in a few seconds." Donald protested, slamming his own hands-on Scrooge's desk just as hard as Scrooge did, wincing a little at the impact it made on his hands. "I tried the direct approach and got nothing, so now we're going to take this slow and just make sure we're nearby. Otherwise, we will have no way to get her to listen to us." 

"And what if Magica returns before you get anything out of Lena?" Scrooge countered, deeply frustrated with this whole endeavor. As far as Scrooge could tell, Lena had not made things easy for them and seemed hell-bent on escalating every perceived slight to ridiculous levels. "I don't want to wake up and find that witch had some master plan that Lena kept from us. 

"Please, Uncle Scrooge. If Magica returns we can just punch her in the face." Donald looked somewhat frustrated by the conversation as well, but Scrooge needed to get this sorted out. Lena wasn't just some charity case that he allowed into his home, she was a direct magical connection to one of his greatest foes and Donald didn't seem to be understanding how important that was. "Since when have you being worried about Magica. She's just an annoying witch." 

"You wouldn't say that if you had been at our last fight. The top of Mount Vesuvius will probably never recover from it. She is dangerous, much more dangerous than I ever expected. She must be dwelt with before she cheats and returns to power." Scrooge warned her, good voice low. He didn't understand why Donald didn't understand that Lena was his only solid lead on Magica, and he had to know what the annoying witch was planning to keep himself and his family safe." Magica is no mere witch, she is a sadistic idiot who cares only for her petty goals at the expense of logic and reality. She is bad news." 

"There is nothing more dangerous than an idiot with power," Donald somewhat agreed, though Scrooge didn't like that Donald was gesturing at him while he said it. "Don't worry about Lena, I'll see what I can do to find out what she knows. You focus on Magica then and make sure she doesn't get her powers back. Is that a deal?"

"Fine, if that's what I have to work with. I've done more with less." Scrooge sighed, slumping back in his seat wondering how he was going to work through this mess. Their ace against Magica was meant to be Lena but with no useful information, it put them as a bit of a disadvantage. Donald took his leave, muttering something about time, but Scrooge paid it no mind. 

Perhaps he had been a little aggressive with his plans. Still, he didn't regret forcing Lena to stay at the manor. That room under the amphitheater was not an inhabitable space and he knew he could provide her protection from Magica while she remained close. It would've been nice if Lena wasn't so intensely defensive about everything, but he owed her. A bit of an unfortunate attitude was a small hurdle to deal with, and the chance to get insider information about Magica was a nice bonus. 

Scrooge slowly rose to his feet and walked over to the bookshelf that lined the wall of his office. Contained within the ornate wooden shelves were many texts here that he'd collected over the years, each too precious to even be moved to the Money bin's library, either due to fragility or legality. However, there was one text that could help here, grimacing to himself, Scrooge pulled one that he wished never to use.

The Grimoire Du Merlock, a text said to hold even the most ancient of curses and magical cantrips, long since forbidden by their potency by even the most powerful of magic users. Naturally, Scrooge knew that Magica would have no sense of concern. If she knew anything to get her previous power back, she would do it without thought of the future or even her presence.

The cover was worn and faded after centuries of misuse and battle, but the book itself was imbibed with so many magical protections that it still looked as new as the night of darkness that created it. Scrooge carefully opened the aged book, knowing all too well the power and curses that it contains. However, his eyes widened as he saw something he most certainly wasn't expecting.

"The pretty prancing pink pegasus played peacefully in the playground-" Scrooge groaned and threw the book back onto his desk. Someone had snuck in and switched out the Grimoire Du Merlock with this childish nonsense, and there were only so few he knew would have done it. Scrooge was no fool, he knew exactly who would be driven enough to sneak into his private study, would have enough magical knowledge to know the power contained within its pages, and enough magical ability to remove the book from the manor.

It was time he had a proper talk with Lena, and he had a pretty good idea where she was hiding. He swiftly exited the room and traveled through the labyrinthian maze that was his home, arriving soon after at his destination, Webbigal's bedroom. Lena likely wanted to be somewhere that she knew, and within the manor, there were only so many places that she spent her time.

Scrooge cautiously put his ear against the solid oak door of Webbigal's room, slightly disappointed to hear absolutely nothing on the other side. Scrooge opened the door as quietly as possible, relieved to know that Beakley's excessive maintenance had kept the aged hinges silent, and slowly entered Webby's room. He had expected to find Lena in the room waiting for her friend, and a part of him had been hoping to find her in the middle of some sort of magical ritual, but to find her merely sleeping in a ball was strangely a bit of a surprise. Sighing to himself, he decided to let her enjoy her rest, the day had probably been an exhausting experience for her and he didn't want to add to it with an accusation.

Carefully he stepped closer and pulled the covers properly over Lena's sleeping form. However, it was at that moment when he saw something that changed everything. Sitting, half-hidden beneath a pillow was an incredibly familiar book cover, the Grimoire DuMerlock. Scrooge's eyes narrowed as he looked down at Lena's sleeping form.

Somehow the youngling had already managed to steal from him, despite only being in his home within a day of returning, and here she was carelessly leaving such a dangerous magical artifact in Webby's room. Scrooge shuddered at the thought of Webbigail getting her hands on such as a powerful artifact. He cared for Webbigail a lot, but she was easily one of his largest concerns when it can to the occult, and to find out that she had inadvertently pulled Lena back to the living was concerning enough.

He wouldn't stand for Lena influencing Webbigal's interest in the occult, one magical being with poor self-control was already difficult enough to deal with, he did not need another. Beakley had enough trouble controlling Webbigal’s more exuberant activities, adding magic to the mix was something he never wanted to ever see. Carefully, to avoid waking the sleeping teenager, Scrooge pulled the old book out. He was going to have a proper talk to her when she woke up if she had just asked he would have let her read through it. He might not be a big fan of magic, but he was smart enough to know that magic was in her nature, and he didn't want to force her research into the hands of others with more nefarious plans.

Still, leaving a heavily cursed book of fundamental cantrips, that had the unfortunate result of killing those stupid enough to attempt to cast them, with a mere inexperienced teenager was not a smart idea. They were going to have a long talk about what was and wasn't appropriate under his roof when she woke.

Shaking his head, Scrooge silently left the room with the ancient text. However, he had barely stepped out of the room when he found himself face to face with his overly skilled house-keeper. She did not look overly impressed.

"Why did you put me on triplet watching?" she asked sternly. "Did you really think that I wouldn't want to be here when I found out what happened?" 

Scrooge winced at the accusatory tone. "I needed someone who would make sure that the kids were kept occupied until I'd worked something out. Let's face it, even at that Funso's place you are the only one I'd trust to keep them out of trouble. You're back early, did something happen?"

"I am not a fool. You didn't want me to know about Lena's return. Webby let slip Lena's return before we had even reached that infernally childish place." Beakley countered Scrooge wondered if her voice had always so accusatory. "I'm sure they can make their way home without me. Now tell me, why did you not let me know? Do you not trust me?" 

"It's not that I don't trust you. I just don't know if she does." Scrooge responded, before shutting his beak abruptly, realizing what he had just said. Oh well in for a dime, in for a gold bar. "She's been through a lot and I just wanted her to be around someone she didn't have much history with. Donald seems to have already gotten some level of communication going with her. Give it a day and we'll have everything we need to know about Magica."

"You thought to shove someone unknown in front of one who was most likely struggling with change was a good idea? Of course, you did." Beakley muttered to herself loud enough to ensure that Scrooge picked up every word with ease. Sometimes he wondered if she did it on purpose, you'd think that someone highly trained is subterfuge would have better control of how their voice traveled. "Lena has been through a massive upheaval, she wants stability foremost. She doesn't need questions, she needs solid answers and direction."

"How would you k-" Scrooge began before being cut off by an audibly annoyed Beakley. 

"I raised Webbigail after she lost her parents," Beakley responded, her voice making it clear that the topic was not one up for debate. "Now you are going to tell me where Lena is and I'm going to see if I can salvage this mess."

"Leave it, for now, she's currently getting some sleep," Scrooge responded as he gestured at Webby's closed bedroom door, feeling rather irritated that Beakley was trying to pull the experience card with him. He was nearly a century her senior and had more world experience than Beakley ever would. "Now I've got some heavy reading to run through to try and head Magica off at the pass. I trust you can stay out of the way."

"Don't push it." She growled at him, a pen balancing threateningly within her fingers as if a knife ready to be propelled into an unexpecting victim, and knowing Beakley that probably wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities. Scrooge merely disregarded the unspoken threat and pushed past her larger form and headed back to the safe comfort of his room. It was time for him to get his research started and ensure the safety of his family, whether by blood or circumstance they were his charges to protect.

Even if they didn’t want it.


	7. Chapter 7

_Magica was right behind her chasing her through the hallways of the McDuck manor, her magical charges snapping violently through the halls causing damage on all it impacted. Lena dove away from the blast and found herself in a small study, Webby sitting nearby frowning at her._

_"Why did you lead her to us?" Webby asked angrily, her eyes boring a hole in Lena's soul. "You know she will kill us."_

_Magica took this moment to blast open the door behind Lena, throwing her into Webby. Struggling to get back to her feet, she saw Magica charging a strong spell, the energy radiating violently through the room._

_She watched as the spell was unleashed and flew straight as her and Webby._

_"It's time to wake up Lena." Magica quietly explained, her form seemingly frozen._

And then she awoke to the feeling of being shaken and a voice telling her to do something, not that she could really understand what.

Waking up to see Beakley leaning over her was not the most comforting thing that Lena had ever experienced. For a second she even wondered if the old spy was attempting to eliminate her. Of course, Beakley was just gently shaking her awake and was smiling, so Lena quickly got a hold of herself. Beakley wasn't a threat, probably. Also, she was now a rather useful shield against the sunlight that was trying its best to blind her.

Lena took a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm the furious beating over her heart. Still distracted, she didn't pay any attention to Beakley's words.

"Are you okay, Lena?" Beakley's voice finally pierced into Lena's conscious. "I'm sorry I had to wake you, but you were thrashing in bed quite badly."

Lena didn't look up, still trying to calm her beating heart, she'd been sleeping not running a marathon. This was just what she needed after that nightmare, an overly able spy with a grudge. Lena and Beakley had not exactly been on agreeable terms when she had last been here. Sure they had made some form of toleration of each other, but they had never really been friends. Lena had been too focused on getting Scrooge's dime, and Beakley had probably been too busy being British or something, for them to really bother spending any time around each other.

"I'm fine," Lena responded, eyeing Beakley as she wondered what she wanted. Did she just want Lena out of Webby's room, or something else? At least she couldn't force her to leave with Scrooge's decision to keep her at the manor, though that didn't mean that there was nothing to be concerned about.

"Is there something I can help you with?" Lena mentally winced at her own voice. She didn't mean to sound quite that annoyed, especially as she knew that Beakley wasn't unfamiliar with the concept of malicious compliance. Scrooge would have told her that Lena could stay in the manor, but probably didn't say anything about how she had to treat her.

"You were having a bad nightmare," Beakley explained without explaining anything at all. Sometimes Lena wondered if she enjoyed being pointlessly vague with her comments. Obviously, she wasn't here just because of a nightmare, she was here because she wanted something.

"Again, is there something you want, Miss Winslet?" Lena asked again, getting sick of the false pretenses. Magica, for all of her many, many, many, many faults, at least never spent any time being this obtuse.

"I just thought we should have a talk," Beakley said simply as she sat down beside Lena on the bed. The bed sank down a few inches as the mass of muscle that was Beakley's years of bodybuilding and Lena couldn't help a mental shudder at what that muscle could do to her now. Lena knew that she had to be careful, this family's only real trigger was family, so long as Beakley didn't think that she was a danger to Webby then everything would be fine. Probably.

"About what?" Lena asked, wondering what they could actually talk about.

"Scrooge said that he wanted you to stay here, I'm here to make sure that your stay is comfortable," Beakley told her, she tried putting an arm around Lena, but she quickly pushed it away. She wasn't a child who needed hugs."Look, Lena, I am not here to try to control your life. I'm not going to stop you being friends with Webby, and I am going to make sure that you are looked after."

_She wants to deceive you._

"Whatever," Lena didn't get why Beakley was telling her this, of course, she was going to, Scrooge was paying her to look after them all, so of course she was going to do her job. What's the point of telling her that she's going to do her job so long as Lena doesn't give her a good reason not to. "Is that all?"

"I just wanted you to understand where we stand." Beakley's clearly false caring tone was becoming grating to Lena. Why couldn't adults just be more blatant about what they wanted instead of tiptoeing around what mattered?

"You don't have to tell me." Lena dismissed Beakley's words with a wave, rolling her eyes at how silly the conversation was. "I know where we stand. If I keep my head in and don't break anything I can stay until this Magica mess is sorted out. After that, I know where I stand in your family."

"I wonder if you do" Beakley began before being interrupted by the bedroom's slamming open and a white blur perfectly flipping through the air to land on the bed beside Beakley. Of course, it was Webby.

Lena didn't even get a chance to scramble to her feet before being tackled onto her back by a ball of happy Webby, her arms latching onto her in a vice grip. It would've been comfortable without the inevitable bruises. "It's nice to see you Webby, but we're kind of in the middle of things" Lean tried to gasp out from the overly tight hug. Webby thankfully took the hint and slightly loosened her grip and allowed Lena to breathe again.

"Aren't you still meant to be at that deplorable play area?" Beakley asked, shooting Webby a critical look. Lena didn't like that look, Magica has been a fan of using it on her before giving her some rather negative feedback. "I did leave you to look after the others, did you just leave them?"

"Louie says that I should ask for a lawyer for questions like that," Webby responded, not even bothering to break eye contact with Lena. Honestly, the lack of blinking was starting to unsettle Lena, eyes shouldn't be held that wide for that long.

"Of course he does..."Beakley muttered before shifting herself off the bed and making her way from the room."I suppose I'll have to go retrieve three children before they get into too much trouble."

"Launchpad is there," Webby tried to defend her choice.

"Retrieve four children then." Beakley rolled her eyes and seemingly send a prayer into the sky. "Keep an eye on Lena while I'm gone Webby."

Lena tried to reject the notion that she would need to be babysat by Webby, but Beakley was already out the door before she could get a word out. Naturally, Webby also didn't let her get a word out before instantly jumping into a running commentary of her day's events. Normally Lena would have at least tried to feign interest, but after today she just honestly didn't want to.

Lena wondered what she was going to do about Bleakley. Sure she was putting on a show of at least acting polite, but Lena knew that it was temporary at best. Unfortunately, Webby chose that moment to pick up her close friend's complete disinterest.

"What's wrong Lena?" Webby asked, she sounded rather worried. "Granny said that you are going to be staying at the manor now. That's a good thing, right? I know you wanted to show off your old place to me, but this is good too. Isn't it?"

_Tell her nothing._

"Nothing's wrong Webby," She tried to explain, but one look at Webby's attempt at looking serious quickly broke her resolve. "Okay, so not everything is not wrong. It's more partially wrong."

"Lena..." Webby was frowning at Lena now, she couldn't stall any longer.

"Webby, I'm not sure how long I can stay here. Magica is getting stronger every day and it's only a matter of time before she tries to come after me." Lena told her, not liking the look of worry plastered across Webby's face. "Scrooge brought me here so I can help work out where Magica is, but if I stay I'm putting you in danger."

"Do you really think that we can't handle a little danger?" Webby asked, and Lena had to admit that it was actually a rather good point. But it completely missed the point that Webby would be in danger. "Just stay with us and if Magica comes around Scrooge will sort her out."

"Magica was weak last time, next time she won't be unless something stops her." Lena tried to weakly push back. "I can't be here if she gets her power back."

"Fine." Webby agreed, smiling happily. Lena frowned, that was far too easy. Since when did Webby actually listen to logical arguments. "You and I will just have to make sure that she never gets back her powers."

Okay, that was the Webby she knew, her typical response to danger was to race straight at it to get a better look.

"This isn't going to be something simple, or safe" Lena began, trying to think of any way that she could convince her friend not to get involved in this mess. "I'm going to need to work out how she is planning on restoring her powers, somehow work out how to stop her, and then somehow actually manage to do it. I don't want you to have to risk your life and get involved."

There was a long silence as Webby frowned and played with her hair, Lena wondered if Webby knew how sickeningly adorable she looked like that. "Okay, can I at least help you research?"

Lena blinked. "Sure, that would be fantastic. I'm kind of stuck at the moment trying to work out where I can do some research and Scrooge kind of hates magic so I didn't really know who to ask."

Lena was still rather concerned about Webby helping with the Magica mess, but she had to admit that so long as Webby stuck to just research and kept her distance when the magic spells started flying, then there wasn't much to be concerned about. With a new resolve and a research obsessed friend, the two quickly worked to pull out every single book on magical spells or incantations that they could find hidden throughout Webby's room. Webby proclaiming that she didn't have a hoarding issue, and Lena not quite believing her.

Unfortunately, it wasn't much later that the two found themselves at a complete roadblock with not a single book containing anything even hinting anything useful. It didn't help that Lena had somehow managed to lose the Grimoire Du Merlock somehow which Webby seemed to believe was the best source of information.

"There's nothing here at all. Just some normal curses and cantrips. All useless. Why don't any of these show how an incredibly powerful witch could regain her powers?." Webby complained as she shut the seventh book with an annoyed thump. As far as Lena could tell, every book that they had found so far only focused on older mythology and simple magical incantations.

_You have to find it._

"Well, they probably wouldn't want the knowledge to be available for just anyone to read," Lena replied, checking the last few pages of the final book and seeing absolutely nothing valuable. Webby's collection of pilfered non-fiction was small, but even Lena had been surprised by how little useful information it contained.

"So it would need to be somewhere hidden away then... Oh! I know where we could find something," Webby smiled and Lena could almost see the new thought burn into existence in her.

"You do?" Lena was wary, if they needed to break into a temple or something then there was no way she'd be able to keep Webby safe.

"Well, maybe There's an old set of magical texts collectively called Magdalene Grimoire that I swear Scrooge keeps somewhere." Webby jumped, literally to Lena's amusement, over to her desk and pulled out some of the old maps it contained. Lena wisely avoided asking why Webby had said maps, sometimes ignorance was preferable. "I'm not certain, but the money bin has a library and no one is allowed in unless you're part of the McDuck family. We sort of count so we could totally get in, or sneak in. Either or really."

"So we just need to break into a highly fortified building, break into an equally fortified library, and try to find a book that may or may not exist?" Lena thought it over, it was not a dangerous tomb and they were unlikely to get in much trouble even if they did get caught. "Alright, when should we do it?"

"Well Granny is busy with the boys and the bus comes in 7 minutes, so now?"

Right, Webby wasn't big on the whole planning thing. Oh well, Lena could think on her feet as well.


	8. Chapter 8

Magic and Scrooge had never been the best of friends, to call it a frosty connection would be putting it mildly. To say that Scrooge wished that every magical entity could be blasted into the cold depths of space so that it could never cheat again was probably more accurate, but still somehow not extreme enough to truly encompass his irritation with the mere concept. However, despite these significant misgivings, Scrooge found himself sitting in his study with a bottle of Merlot and a notable number of magically inclined texts.

The key text was the Grimoire Du Merlock that he had retrieved from Lena, something he was rather glad about when he saw the book's true contents. For years the book had sat in his study slowly getting dusty from disuse. He had originally obtained the book with the intention to study its contents to better learn about his magically empowered opponents, but with Magica's defeat, he hadn't found himself requiring the knowledge.

So he was somewhat surprised to find out that the Grimoire Du Merlock actually contained a fair amount of references to incredibly powerful spells and potions that would have been incredibly useful if he'd ever bothered to read it.

"Bah, cheaters," he muttered to himself as he kept exploring the ancient text. He was going to have to have a long conversation with Lena about why she stole this from him. He understood that she was magical, but he saw no reason she needed to cheat if she was going to be staying with the family.

He paused as he saw an interesting passage, was that really a good option or was it the only one. He would have preferred if it wasn't a haiku. Rolling his eyes, Scrooge read out the faded words, why did those of magical inclinations felt so driven to dress up their instructions in pointless double talk and poetry.

"The closest to gods"  
"A peak of future sights"  
"The oracle waits"

Okay so maybe not the most straightforward of clues, but it was still a strong contender. Now Scrooge just had to decipher it to figure out what it was trying to say, which shouldn't be all that difficult. He was a McDuck, solving a mystery was his bread and butter.

"it's clearly describing an oracle of some sort who presumably is skilled in some future-telling ability" Scrooge muttered to himself, rubbing his chin while he pondered the puzzle before him. An oracle would definitely be able to lead him to Magica, though how he would convince a magic being of his noble intent was a question he would have to answer at a later date. First, he just needed to ascertain the place it was confusingly describing.

It was time to bring in some aid.

* * *

Scrooge would be the first to admit that getting the triplets involved was probably a mistake. Sure, they would bring plenty of youthful ideas and energy to the puzzle, but they were also just children and the challenge of solving a difficult puzzle didn't exactly excite them all. Louie barely even heard the words 'knowledge is a treasure' before sitting back and playing on his phone. He really needed to address that duck's apparent gold lust.

Dewey and Huey were both being rather helpful at letting Scrooge rubber duck his way through the puzzles. Okay, maybe helpful was probably a rather strong word for what really could be summed up as just a long series of loud arguments that ran in circles. However, some of their arguments did create the opening of a decent view.

"I still say that the 'closer to the gods' part means that it needs to be near a religious thingy," Dewey argued, jabbing the line with an excessive amount of force. Scrooge was thankful that he'd replaced the original with a picture before involving them, century-old parchment wasn't a durable material. "So we need to find some important place that existed a billion years ago. It's obvious."

"Probably more like a couple hundred-year-old as Haikus aren't a billion years old." Huey corrected, flipping open his work guidebook to the relevant book and gesturing back. "I'm guessing some sort of temple somewhere that was the biggest place a few hundred years ago."

"That doesn't really narrow it down, boy," Scrooge countered as he palmed through an old encyclopedia to see what he could find. "I'm not convinced this is a temple, it feels like it's something else but I have no idea what."

"Oh, I know!" Huey exclaimed. "This is a Haiku and, according to the WoodChuck Guidebook, Haikus were a form of poetry from Nippon, so maybe they mean a temple or shrine there. Find out if there was one built on a really tall hill, Uncle Scrooge."

Chuckling, Scrooge quickly flipped through another encyclopedia in search of the lead's answer. "Generally these sorts of things are not in overly populated places, so I'm not sure if this is the correct meaning." He tried to explain, but Huey and Dewey were both fixated on solving the riddle to truly appreciate the wisdom he was providing. "Maybe we need to go over it again before we get stuck on the wrong path."

"It's got to be this, whatever else could it mean," Dewey argued back, pushing past Scrooge and thumbing through the encyclopedia in a rush to find out what he wanted. Huey went back to flipping through pages in his guide, every so often pausing before continuing.

"Maybe it's meant as a metaphor or something," Huey muttered, still flipping through pages. "Maybe they mean closer like your dying or something. So is there like a massive grave somewhere that has pointing bits for the 'peak' bit?"

"Oh come on, you three are all overthinking this." Louie cut in, his voice exasperated after listening to the prattle on for far too long. “It says ‘peak’ and ‘closest to gods’. It clearly just means a tall hill or something. If it's the 'closest' then it has to be either a big mountain that is the closest to the sky. So, therefore, it has to be the highest peak, Mount Neverest."

"It can't be Mount Neverest," Scrooge countered, glad to see Louie getting involved. "We went there and there was no Oracle, but I am surprised to see you getting involved."

"I was always involved, I was just looking it up on the internet instead of looking through books older than Uncle Donald." Louie countered, waving his phone in Scrooge's face. Scrooge didn't know how the could read such tiny little screens with their tiny little text and strange controls. "You should try it sometime, the information is actually up to date and faster to access."

"Bah," Scrooge hated the idea of shortcuts, be they magic or technology. Whatever happened to the good old days where you spend your time surrounded by the wonderful scents of old leather-bound books and scrolls, instead of tapping on an ity-bity screen and getting eye-strain from trying to read the silly things. "Books are always better because they have been created with effort and care. Anyone can put anything online."

Meanwhile, Huey and Dewey had kept themselves separate from the argument and were instead reading through a long paragraph on mountains. "Hey, Uncle Scrooge, I think Louie might be half right. I don't think it's Mount Neverest." Dewey said, flicking between two pages.

"It's the tallest peak, isn't it," Louie argued back, joining the others to look at what Dewey was so interested in. Scrooge was surprised to see Dewey actually looking at the history of Haikus. “And what do girly poems have to do with mountains.”

“Oh, I get it!” Huey exclaimed. “Haikus originated in Nippon, right. So this poem was probably written in Japan, so they must be talking about a place in Nippon.”

“So Mount Neverest can’t be the correct mountain then.” Louie finished, leaning over Dewey’s shoulder to see the long list of mountains that were being reviewed. "So what mountain should it be."

"Mount Fuji is the tallest peak in Nippon." Scrooge cut in as he lent over the three younglings and pointed at the mountain's entry. "So the 'peak of future sights' that is 'The closest to gods' must be Mount Fuji. In fact, I believe it has something of cultural importance over there, so I'd say that there's a good chance that the peak will contain the oracle we seek."

"I want to see an Oracle as much as the next duck, but don't think for a second that I didn't miss that you never told us why you want to meet one," Louie said, smiling deviously up at Scrooge. That kid was sometimes far too smart for his own good, a common trait in the McDuck family that he was happy to see shown so strongly in the next generation. "So, why don't you tell us?"

Scrooge sighed as he sat back in his chair, this was not going to be a fun conversation, but it was a question that he really should answer, both for them and himself.

"With Lena's return, things have become a bit difficult." He began, trying to determine a nicer way to explain the seriousness of the situation that they had all found themselves in. He didn't want to just tell them that Lena's return had painted a giant bullseye on all of Duckberg and Magica would be throwing everything at them to steal back her powers.

"Let's just say that I need to make sure that Magica is gone and that Lean is safe." He told them, wincing at the blatant lie. Magica was not gone, he knew that she had survived and he had heard significant news about her movements over the past month. He wasn't going to waste time with an oracle asking questions that he already knew the answer to.

No, he was going to find out just what it was that Magica was planning and make sure that he would be able to counter whatever stupidity that she attempted before injury or worse occurred. If that meant that Lena needed protection, then he would do his damndest to protect her.

Unfortunately, the triplets were all glaring at him as if they hadn't believed his clearly believable lie. "Did I say something wrong?" He asked nervously, did Dewey have to be frowning so heavily as he glared.

"We saw Magica run away," Louie told him as he rolled his eyes. "Just tell us what you are trying to do? We might be kids, but we're not idiots you know."

"Fine." Scrooge quickly ran through his thoughts. He couldn't tell them everything, but surely a half-truth would suffice. "I want to make sure that Magica doesn't harm anyone." He left out the whole regaining powers part, no need to unnecessarily worry them. Thankfully this time they did seem to believe him.

"Okay, so when do we take off?" Scrooge froze at the question from Dewey. They were just meant to be here to help him solve a riddle, but he should have known that they would want to join him. To them, this was just another adventure with a bit of treasure at the end. "Well, I was planning on going on my ow-"

Okay, now they were back to glaring at him angrily again. "Nevermind, we'll take off this afternoon, just make sure you tell your uncle so he doesn't try and skin me alive when we return."

"Deal" The three ducks agreed as they scampered out the room to seek permission.

Scrooge stared at his ceiling, wondering how he was going to pull this off. If they even managed to get to the Oracle, he would still need to figure out some way to ask his questions without them getting wind of the complete answers. Ah well, an issue for another time. Scrooge pulled out his aging cell phone.

"Beakley, I'm planning a trip to Nippon," He told her curtly, ignoring the 'not your assistant' jabs returned by Beakley. "I need you to keep an eye on Lena and keep her in the manor."

Scrooge nearly dropped his phone at her response, "What do you mean she and Webby are gone?"

Great, yet another complication to add to this mess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used 'Nippon' instead of Japan here to separate the DuckTales universe slightly from ours while still using real names. Not sure if it really works, but we'll see how it goes.


	9. Chapter 9

Webby and Lena both had a significant amount of experience breaking and entering into forbidden places, though from decidedly different backgrounds. For Webby tombs and crypts had been her source of experience and she was uniquely skilled at spotting a death trap from a mile away. Lena's experience was a little different and was primarily from her history of stealing from modern establishments, so while Webby would completely disregard a security camera, to Lena it was a beacon of trouble.

On their own, they had scarcely a snowball's chance in hell to break into the money bin undetected. However, together their odds were much better and Lena had quite a fair amount of hope that they would be able to pull off this. It also helped that it didn't matter if they were spotted as they were already mostly allowed here and she was reasonably sure that Webby wasn't even planning on breaking in at all.

_ Get in and out and make sure she doesn't slow you down. _

Lena blinked, sometimes she had the strangest thoughts in her mind, though an unwelcome intrusive thought was a lot easier to ignore than a yelling magical aunt threatening fire and brimstone. Shaking her head she refocused back on the challenge standing before her and Webby.

The Money Bin's front door. It was a massive metal and glass construction that normally would have slid open as soon as they grew near, welcoming them into the secure building. However, after-hours access was not something that they possessed, leading them to investigate other options.

"I say we try out the explosives!" Webby cheered, pulling some rather ominous objects from her backpack. "I knew it was a good idea to borrow some from granny's stockpile, and it's been soo long since I last got to play with a properly shaped charge."

"Nope", Lena interrupted as she quickly shoved the apparent explosives back into the bag. She did want to think about what Webby meant by stockpile, some things were better not known. "How about we don't choose an option that will make Scrooge hate me any more than he already does?"

"He doesn't hate you," Webby frowned, thankfully no longer trying to pull expired ordinance out of her unicorn-themed backpack. "Probably."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Lena replied dryly, trying to avoid thinking too much about that small addendum as the two walked towards the front of the looming building. If even Webby wasn't entirely convinced of Scrooge's position, then it wasn't good. "How about we just walk in the front door and see if you have access anyway?" 

_ He can't know you're here.  _

Lena flicked her eyes over at Webby, did she whisper something or were her thoughts getting louder. "Alternatively, maybe we should sneak in," Lena commented. "I don't want Scrooge to even know we broke in. The whole point of this is to make him trust me. It's probably a bad idea to start that off by breaking his trust so blatantly." 

"I guess," Webby muttered, clearly frowning. "breaking in would probably be more fun anyway." Webby had some of the strangest ways of looking at the bright side and Lena didn't want her to think any other way. Webby carefully stepped onto the grassy strip that surrounded the building with Lena following close behind. The strip extended out encircling the entire building with varying widths, some wide enough for a plane to land, others barely enough to walk. "The McDuck library is in the lower levels of the bin, so we could probably enter through the building's climate control system's air circulation entry. I remember granny telling me that they had to use really big ducts because of the size of the building. So we should be able to get through them," 

"You know, normally people would just say, 'let's just find a fire escape', or something," Lena muttered as she followed Webby past the dense shrubbery. 

_ There are cameras you idiot, look left.  _

Lena's eyes glanced over and spied the reflective glint of the unmistakable unblinking eye of a camera, thankfully not facing in their direction. Lena grabbed Webby and pulled her back behind a small bush, pointing in the direction of the camera. 

"We've got cameras," Lena told her breathlessly, finding herself already out of breath at the short boost of adrenaline. "We've got to somehow get back them." 

The two carefully looked past their new technical opponent towards the gigantic building's ventilation system intake. Despite the incredibly polished upkeep of the building and its ridiculous opulence, the ventilation was nowhere near as well maintained, but the security system had no such budgetary constraints.

The cameras had seemingly perfect coverage and were even annoyingly static with no sweeping turns that would at least give them an opening. Even Webby looked completely stumped if Lena had to guess from the frown seemingly etched into her face.

_ You're a shadow, use your magic to be your rightful form. _

Lena flinched at the weirdly caustic thought, wondering why she was reminding herself of her questionable existence? It wasn't like it was going to be useful here, it wasn't like she could just use her magic to sneak in, she barely had enough power to levitate a leaf or conjure a few blue sparks.

"Lena, are you trying to do that?" Webby asked Lena, giving her the strangest look that she had ever seen on her face. She looked so concerned that Lena pulled herself from her faults to look down and see what was so strange.

It took a fair amount of effort to not scream as she realized that from her waist down she had somehow regressed to a mere shadow, and she could see her shadow wrapping around Webby's feet. However, with a mere thought, she felt the shadow retract back into herself and she found herself sitting full-formed again as if nothing had happened. 

"What was that?"Webby asked quietly.

"I think I can become a shadow?" Lena told her in disbelief, wondering where that ability had come from. Magica had been very hands-off when it came to teaching her about her magical abilities unless they directly furthered Magica's plans. Now she just needed to work how to use this new ability somehow.

_ Grab the girl and get inside. _

Lena shrugged and decided to go for it if this worked the way it should then it should be rather easy. She reached out and tightly held Webby's hand in her own, closing her eyes and thinking of darkness and light. An immense feeling of nothingness swept around her as she felt her position in the earthly world fade. Everything seemed to be twisting and shifting continuously as she struggled to understand the world she found herself within. She pushed through the nothingness, pulling Webby's form along with her, the quietness deafening as she struggled to even hear the slightest murmur from Webby.

_ Release yourself _

She opened her eyes and everything snapped into place, the mass of the world suddenly weighing on her as she collapsed onto the smooth metallic surface beneath her. She felt exhausted like she had just run a mile up a hill carrying Webby.

"That was awesome!" Webby exclaimed, helping Lena get back into a sitting position, a nice smile plastered back across her face. "You look super tired, don't worry. Just have a rest while I scout ahead. I'll be back in a minute."

Lena tired watched her happily skip down the small metal ductwork, while she remained resting herself against the cool metal wall, leaning up against the bars of the air intake to get a bit of sunlight. That short little journey had taken a lot out of her and she honestly wasn't sure if she'd be able to find enough energy to make the journey back out. Hopefully Webby had another means of escape, she normally planned at least two.

_ You better hurry up, she could be doing anything. _

Okay, those stupid intrusive thoughts were getting incredibly annoying. Lean shook her head to try and clear it, wincing as her tiredness made her head throb in discomfort. Still, she did feel awake enough to clamber back onto all fours and move deeper into the confusing maze of metalwork and darkness in search of Webby.

Thankfully the adventurous duck hadn’t gone too far ahead and Lena was able to quickly catch up to her and find her peering silently through a small air vent. Lena opened her mouth to ask what she was doing, but before she could get a word out Webby's hand shot out and covered Lena's mouth before she moved closer.

"The McDuck archivist, Emily Quackfaster, is right there," Webby whispered near silently into Lena's ear. "We need to carefully crawl past here so she doesn't hear us, then we need to wait until she moves before we can get in."

_ This is taking too long, you should have enough energy to go again. _

Lena had to admit that she was feeling rather refreshed despite her previous shadow trip, so who was the say that she couldn't save a little time. She pulled Webby back from the vent and tightened her grip on her friend before allowing herself to drift back into darkness. Unlike last this, Lena was prepared for the effect and wasted no time in pulling herself and Webby into another section of the library below, away from the Library's archivist.

The shadow world surrounding them faded as Lena released her control, breathing heavily at the exertion. She could hear Webby saying something from beside her, but all her ears could pick up was her own rasping breath. Whatever this ability was, it was exhausting to use. Lena nearly fell over as Webby stepped away from her grip, barely managing to regain her balance with Webby's help, the shadow walk taking a heady toll.

"Please tell me we are near that book we need," Lena tiredly asked Webby, barely even able to look up. "I don't think I have any more of that in me."

"Look for yourself," Webby responded cryptically as she slammed a heavy book down on the small reading desk beside her, the old oak groaning in complaint at the excessive force. Lena looked over it, her eyes struggling to focus for a second, before snapping sharply into focus on that ancient text sitting there.

Without a doubt, it was what they were looking for. The Magdalene Grimoire, an aged text that for years had caused more conflicts in the magical universe than any other force. Even Magica had held the book in high regard, telling Lena that it and dime were the two most powerful artifacts that she had ever experienced, and now Lena had it sitting in front of her.

"Was it really just sitting on the shelf?" Lena asked in disbelief. "Do you have any idea how dangerous this thing is? It should've been behind like 4 iron doors or something."

"Well, it was. You just sort of already got us into the high-security area," Webby told her, frowning a little bit. "I mean I appreciate you making it easy, but I had this whole plan with my grappling hook and a dog-eared textbook that I wanted to try out. It does mean that the book is here for us to use, silver linings and all that."

"Oh" Lena shrugged, she'd take the positives where she could. Throwing caution aside, she leaned over and started flipping through the ancient text, searching for anything that could even remotely help. There had to be something important that as soon as she saw it would give her the perfect plan to buy herself freedom and a proper family. "Come and help me find anything about a magical transfer."

To Lena's complete lack of surprise, the ancient text didn't even have an index forcing her and Webby to skim through the book as quickly as they could in search of anything even vaguely mentioning magical transfer. However after a few minutes of hurried speed reading and perseverance Webby suddenly threw her hand down on the page, interrupting Lena's attempt to turn the page. 

"Found it!" Webby exclaimed, her overeagerness nearly tearing the page as she pulled it towards herself. Lena leaned over as was relieved to see that her friend was correct, there was a full poem outlining the process of magical transfer. Lena smiled, finally something she had expertise in.

Two souls divided between two factions

Unilateral consenting made actions

A transfer of all magical intent

Under a born moon power is sent

From a lake and four beneath a high peak

from where the sun once rose for some to seek

"Do all magical spells have to rhyme?" Webby asked, Lena could hear no small amount of irritation in her voice. "The rhyming scheme is nothing more than rhyming couplets, and lazy ones at that. It's a stupid way to write a spell."

"These are more basic instructions than a magic spell," Lean interjected, quite enjoying the chance to demonstrate some level of ability that wasn't magic for once. "This is kind of an obvious one anyway. 'where the sun once rose' is just a lazy way of referencing 'the land of the rising sun' which is Nippon. So the spell needs to be recited from somewhere there."

She ran her finger along the lines again, pausing on the fourth line. "Under a born moon power is sent..." Lean muttered, the words slowly fitting into place. She looked up at Webby in alarm. "She needs a new moon to use this."

"What like a solar eclipse, there isn't one of those for months," Webby replied, checking her notepad. Lena couldn't even bring herself to be surprised that Webby kept track of eclipses that closely, because of course, she would. "So that means we're safe, right."

"Not really, this is only asking for a new moon. It doesn't look like it requires that extreme of a power draw. If she had her previous powers she could probably do it no matter the moon. " Lena studied the poem again. "There is a new moon tomorrow night, and I think I know where it will need to happen. It says 'a lake and four beneath a high peak', there is a magical haven in the five lake region near the tallest peak in Nippon. That has to be what it is referencing."

"So, I guess we need to hurry to get there," Webby, replied, smiling now that they had a good idea of what they needed to do. "So let's blow this joint, catch a plane, and defeat Magica."

"How are we going to get to Nippon by tomorrow?" Lena lamented, annoyed that they'd hit such a sane problem. Magical cantrips and shadow worlds were one thing, but planning a trip somewhere was not in her skill set. "It's not like we could fly there, we don't have any money."

"I know where Scrooge keeps his credit card," Webby added, looking rather sheepish as she pulled out a familiar card of plastic bearing Scrooge's name.

"Excellent..." Lena froze and looked at Webby sharply. "When you said, 'blow this joint', please tell me you weren't being literal."

  
  
  
  
  



	10. Chapter 10

The Sunchaser’s engines were screaming as Launchpad pushed the plane to its top speed as the clouds shot by. Meanwhile, Scrooge was sitting back in the co-pilot's seat contemplating the choice he had made. It had been a difficult decision, but the only real option he had. The triplets had been so insistent, but Scrooge had stood his ground and made it plainly clear that this mission was not one of fancy. Lives could very well lay within the balance and it was far too dangerous to bring them. Naturally, these arguments meant nothing to all three triplets and it was only through Donald's intervention that he had as able to ensure that they remained safe at home.

Scrooge's sour mood was not helped by Webby and Lena who were suspiciously nowhere to be found and his Money Bin had its library broken into. Whatever those two were planning was going to be problematic at best. He was not happy that they had gone off alone after he'd made it very clear that this was his problem to solve, not theirs. He even had to put up with the presence of his house-keeper who had been very insistent on their presence on this trip. Beakley knew that wherever they ended up would most likely be the same place that her grand-daughter would be.

"Land ho, Mr. McDuck," Launchpad called out as the Sunchaser violently touched down in the grass alongside the runway, the landing gear still up as the plane skidded on the glass. Scrooge was rather impressed, Launchpad’s aim was definitely improving, maybe one day soon he’d actually hit the runway.

The slightly-buckled plane eventually slid to a stop next to the airport's main terminal and they all quickly clambered out in search of their adventure. Thankfully their near-perfect landing put them right beside the airport's vehicle rental facilities and they soon found themselves in a rental car driven by Launchpad as it careened towards the base of Mt Fuji.

Conveniently, the trek up the side of the mountain turned out to not be much of a trek at all, apparently, the whole area had long since grown to be considerably more residential and normal paved roads even stretched a fair distance up the side of the formidable peak.

This allowed them to not bother with the hassle of hiring trekking gear and planning a route to the peak, and instead just required a fair amount of driving. The part of Scrooge that demanded adventure found the whole experience more than a little disappointing, but the part of him that held his concern for his family easily surpassed the negativity. If the trip was going to be simple and straight-forward, well he was just going to have to suck it up and put up with the sheer convenience for a change

Scrooge looked up from the confounding street map to check their progress, barely even noticing the rough shudder as the rental vehicle mounted yet another curb under the controls of Launchpad. They were close.

"Okay, so when we arrive I will need you to remain near the vehicle," Scrooge warned Beakley and Launchpad, trying to ignore that Launchpad was 'resting his eyes' while they were driving. "Oracles are not known for being the most pleasant of individuals and love to enforce trials for anyone unlucky enough to require them. So the less of us that need to go through it, the better."

"I will be going with you," Bleakley interrupted, seemingly not overly concerned about the fact that he had just literally told her that he wanted the exact opposite. Sometimes he really did wonder why he bothered paying her if she was going to ignore everything he told her. "I deserve to hear what is going on. This isn't some silly little treasure hunt. My family matters to me, as it does to you."

"Fine." Scrooge knew that when she got like this, there was nothing he could do to persuade her. "Launchpad, you stay in the car."

"Aww, but I want to see what an oracle is like," Launchpad complained, crossing his arms in clear indignation. "I want to see if it puts you to sleep. "

Scrooge contemplated informing him that he was thinking of chlorophyll and not an oracle, but decided against lowering himself to that level. So he instead elected to stay silent and step out the rental vehicle without bothering to respond, Beakley following closely behind.

It didn't take long before the two of them were standing at the entrance to a small run-down wooden cabin that had experience better centuries. Oracles were well known for being sequestered in relatively normal homes in comparison to most of those with magical inclination, so Scrooge wasn't all that surprised the area seemed to average. He stepped up and gave the door a sharp knock, just twice in quick succession. There was barely a pause before the door slowly opened into the darkness of the small cabin's interior.

"I would prefer if you remained out here, Beakley." Scrooge tried one more time to convince her to remain outside to avoid complicating a situation that he already knew was going to be a mess. "But I know you won't."

"Correct" And with that simple exchange, the two entered into the darkness.

Naturally, as soon as the duo passed through the threshold, the room instantly brightened up to show the homely log cabin's interior and the room's sole inhabitant sitting on a rocking chair, their aged face and long flowing grey hair making it difficult to properly identify them. Scrooge knew all too well that trying to identify an Oracle was a fool's errand and quickly pushed away from the idea of trying to understand the aged face before him.

"I see you've finally arrived, Scrooge." The androgenous voice creaked out of the aged creature before them, it's eyes locking onto Scrooge's and staring with a deepness that made him feel strangely uneasy. "Come you two, sit."

It gestured vaguely as two aged wooden chairs that Scrooge had sworn didn't exist when he'd previously looked around the room, another thought that was better discarded than actively followed. they quickly followed the instructions and found them sitting in two of the most uncomfortable chairs ever invented. The backs were lent too far forward and the base just seemed to not quite be level enough to be comfortable, but Scrooge didn't care a bit of discomfort, this was far too important for a bit of irritation to matter.

"We're here to-" Scrooge began, but was silenced with a wave.

"There is no need to tell me, seeing the future is my specialty" The Oracle chuckled as three cups of perfectly tempered tea appeared before them, or had always been there, it was rather difficult for Scrooge to determine which. "I have the information that you desire, and the information you need. I can give you one, but the second will lead to a valued token sacrifice from you."

"Take the obvious option, please," Beakley muttered but stayed mercifully silent while Scrooge quickly pondered on his two choices. However, it was a rather simple decision to be made, he had experience with Oracles in the past and he saw no reason for this to be any different.

"I am not a fool, if I chose to only hear what I need, you would simply tell me nothing as I apparently need to hear nothing," Scrooge responded, he had been burned far too many times to even consider listening to such a ridiculous offer. "I will take the information I desire."

The Oracle sighed and placed the cup of tea back down onto its saucer. "I will admit that I expected you to answer that way, but I will make it clear that I don't intend to deceive you." It said simply. "However, if you only want to hear what you desire, then so be it."

The Oracle's eyes rolled back as its form slumped down in the chair, the room becoming noticeably darker despite the windows remaining open. Suddenly its eyes snapped open and locked onto Scrooge's "Your greatest magical opponent is approaching the seven lakes." The Oracle droned emotionlessly. "They intend to gain a considerable amount of power."

And with those words, light flooded back into the room and the Oracle was back to sipping from a small cup of tea as if nothing had even happened. Noting Scrooge's look of irritation, if merely shrugged. "You get used to temporal possession after a millennium or so. Now, about that second option."

"How was that my desired information?" Scrooge complained, angrily stabbing his finger in the air in the direction of the Oracle. Why was it that every time he dealt with a magical entity, they always tried to poorly deceive him. " I wanted to know what she was planning and where she was. You just told me where she would be nearby and a plan that everyone already knows. What was the point of that?"

"You didn't desire to know where Magica was or what her plan was, you just wanted your suspicions confirmed" The Oracle responded, chuckling darkly. Scrooge found himself lost for words, annoyed with himself for letting himself be tricked once again by a magical force. "However this trip need not be pointless. I can still tell you what you need to know, and I promise that you will not be disappointed by what I have to say. All I require is your promise that your token will willingly be sacrificed to the possession of another."

"I'm sure that this 'token' is something that I won't wish to give up?" Scrooge muttered, irritated at the whole situation. "I assume it's my number one dime, it seems to be the only thing everyone wants to take from me. What makes you think I'll give you my dime for more pointless drivel?"

"It would be better to not antagonize those you want help from," Bleakley whispered from beside Scrooge, but he didn't care. This wasn't about getting information anymore, this was about ensuring that magical idiots knew what they were doing when they involved Scrooge McDuck.

"This is no silly game. I give you my word that I have the knowledge you need." The oracle spoke plainly, taking a short break to take another sip of their tea before continuing. "All I require is for you to promise to give up possession of your dime."

"This dime means a lot to me." Scrooge rejected the offer, his hand involuntarily clutching at the dime concealed beneath his shirt. "Give me one good reason to give it up."

"Your shadow will die if you don't," The Oracle responded somberly, no longer looking into Scrooge's eyes and seemingly refusing to even look in his direction.

Scrooge tightened his grip around the dime outraged at how this had gone. The Oracle was clearly saying that Lena would die if he didn't give up his dime, or at the very least threatening as much. He didn't have much of a choice. "This dime means a lot to me, and it always will, but as important as it may be, it isn't worth a life. Especially not one of my family."

His hands shaking, he pulled out the dime from around his neck and held it out to the Oracle, this was the second time in as many days that he'd allowed another possession of his dime. However as soon as he reached out, the oracle pushed the dime back into his hands, frowning at him.

"I'm not the one that needs it, but I am glad to see you desire their safety. The one you call Lena is heading to the southernmost lake of the seven and there she and her friend will meet the magical user you most fear." The Oracle told him, pulled its hands away from the dime entirely. "This element of great power will no longer be your if you wish to save them."

"My dime..." Scrooge stared as the money in his hands, why did everything always seem to lead back to this tiny coin.

"You two must hurry, they will be meeting within the hour." The Oracle commanded, their voice becoming stronger. Scrooge and Beakley quickly moved to leave the small cabin but paused at a word from the Oracle behind them. "A lot more lives than just yours may hang in the balance if you fail, so please don't. I quite enjoy this mortal plain"

Scrooge smirked. "I'm Scrooge McDuck, I don't fail."


	11. Chapter 11

It was becoming increasingly clear that Scrooge had never heard of a daily expense limit and had never bothered adding one to his platinum debit card. Or at least that was the only conclusion Lena could reach based on the impressive bill that she and Webby have managed to accrue through some less than financially responsible decisions. A large part of Lena wanted to blame Webby for the plainly ridiculous costs, but Webby had managed to successfully justify their choice of first-class plane tickets as it would allow them to be fully rested for what was to come. Naturally, Lena was having a much more difficult time justifying the convertible sports car that they had rented from the airport for a fair premium. Scrooge was going to kill them if Magica didn't manage it.

"You could argue we wanted to get there quickly," Webby responded to her concerns, seemingly unconcerned about Scrooge's inevitably angry response to this trips bill. Lena knew that Webby likely had nothing to personally worry about as Scrooge would nearly certainly lay all of the blame at Lena's feet, and she couldn't help feeling rather irritated at Webby's rather laissez-faire attitude to it all. "I mean the price wasn't that different after you bribed them to let you drive without a license, anyway."

_It won't matter, just get there soon._

Even the stupid intrusive thoughts had stopped being all that helpful with Lena's current predicament, repeatedly telling her to disregard the costs and forge ahead. Which was how she found herself driving an underpowered convertible through a near-empty road in the late evening as she raced towards a lake in the hopes of disrupting Magica's plans.

_Webby thinks your being a fool._

"Just stop it." Lena snapped at Webby, irritated with how the day had gone. Trying to keep her attention to the road as they finally turned off the highway as they neared their destination. The stupid convertible had seemed like a great idea, but it turns out that mountains are cold and they'd been forced to close the roof nearly as soon as they'd started driving to retain some feeling in their hands. "Scrooge is going to be angry when he sees the mess we've made, so how about we stop talking about it so I can at least pretend to not think about it."

"Lena, he's n-" Webby tried to interject, but Lena wasn't having any of it.

"Stop. Just stop" Lena interrupted, slowing the car as they turned off the side street as well and began along a dirt track. "Unlike you, Scrooge and I are not exactly seeing eye-to-eye at the moment and I am really not looking forward to telling him that I'd betrayed his trust again."

"I was the one that took his card, not you!" Webby tried to protest, but Lena was hearing none of it.

"We both know that he's going to blame me for this." Lena shot back before abruptly stamping on the breaks of the car and skidding to a stop. Webby instinctively braced herself, Launchpad's driving had well prepared her for Lena's and soon the two found themselves walking along a narrow dirt trail. Webby tried to return to their previous discussion, but Lena quickly cut her off again. "Look, just drop it Webby. We'll deal with it later. If we sort out Magica it won't matter anyway."

_Get to the lake, now._

Webby wasn't overly happy with Lena's decision, but she remained silent as they neared the lake that they both knew Magica was near certainly at. Webby had been insistent on outlining a proper plan of attack if they actually found Magica there, but Lena had the unnerving feeling that the plans wouldn't matter.

_It's just ahead._

The two walked in silence, one worried, one bitter and both concerned about how the night would play out. They had a lot of magical protections and Lena had ensured that there had been little traces of magic in the air to maximize there chances to set their ambush before Magica's arrival. However, for all their planning, it was regretfully all in vain.

The instant that Lena stepped out into the clearing beside the lake, she knew that she had just made a grave mistake. The magical leylines surrounding the shore, hidden beneath a thin glamour, speared into life and glowed with the intensity of a full moon. Lena tried to turn and throw her self back but instead found herself running straight into Webby and collapsing into a pile of tangled limbs. Within just a few scant seconds it was over and Lena knew that they were trapped.

_Finally._

"What was that about?" Webby asked, plainly confused as her friend's odd behavior. Lena realized that Webby could not see any of the magical lines that surrounded them, the magical enchantments were designed to be concealed from the non-magical.

"We're in a ritual circle, and a strong one at that," Lena told her, grabbing Webby's hand tightly to make sure that the girl didn't try and leave. "Don't move, there's no telling what would happen if we cross it."

"So what do we do now?" Webby asked, eyeing the area around them.

Lena was completely at a loss on what to do next, her magical protections should have ensured that they would have plenty of warning about such strong magical enchantments. The power required to hide such a powerful spell was surely far beyond Magica's remaining powers. Surely something else had to be going on, Magica was not this powerful.

_Oh how wrong you are_

Lena flinched at the strangely familiar caustic tone. Where had she heard that voice before? She tore her eyes away from the edges of the ritual circle and looked up at Webby and was surprised to catch a look of anger plastered across her face with her eyes locked on something behind Lena.

"What are you looking at?" Lena began as she turned to look as well, freezing as she saw someone that she had hoped to never see again, It was Magica, and her lack of powers had clearly being exaggerated if Lena was going to judge by the fact that she was currently floating four feet from the ground, a large crystal shining a vivid shade of purple being the clear source of her magical power. "Oh, darn."

"Ah, Lena," Magica crooned as she floated down closer to them. Lena couldn't help cowering away from her outstretched hand, though Webby didn't share anything similar and threw herself at the outstretched arms, however, a mere gesture from Magica was enough to freeze her in the air. With a slow shift of her wrist, Magica slowly spun Webby's frozen form around as if inspecting a model. "I see you're still keeping the company of these fools. A fool surrounding herself with fools."

"What are you doing here?" Lena asked, trying to put as much distance between herself and Magica as she could, trying to push her worries about Webby from her mind and retain some sense of awareness. Webby would not be happy is all Lena could do was panic, she would want Lena to keep a cool head and make sure that they both got out of this alive. "Okay, I know why you're here, but why are you here now? The full moon isn't going to be out for at least another half an hour."

"Poor stupid little Lena," Magica mockingly responded, giving a horribly false look of concern to Lena. "Do you honestly think that the silly little story you read in that book was my plan? I may have made you believe that it was, but waiting for a full moon and getting a bit of temporary power was never going to be on the cards, dear."

"What are you planning?" Lena asked, desperately trying to keep control of herself despite every part of her screaming that Webby was in trouble and that she had to do something to help her. "How did you even know that we would be here?"

"Oh, you stupid fool," Magica taunted, waving Webby in Lena's face like a demented puppet, the young duck's head rolling back and forth from the rough movements and her eyes darting around in a panic, clearly all to aware of everything that was happening. "I knew you were going to be here,"

_Because I told you to come here._

"How c-" Learn froze, how had she missed such an obvious thing, a voice in her head that barely even pretended to help her, what else could it be than Magica. They hadn't been stopping her, they had been doing exactly what she wanted all along. "How could I be so stupid?" Lena muttered to herself, trying to ignore the gormless grin that spread over Magica's face as she overheard.

"You always have been an idiot," Magica taunted, laughing as she dropped Webby onto the ground into a pile of bruised limbs. "You've always been a poor excuse for a formed being, you might have even thought that you had your own mind. You don't, of course. You're just a weak pathetic shadow and I know everything you have planned, everything you said, every thought in your stupid little head. "

So this was it, Lena thought bitterly to herself. All of her efforts, months spent lost within a world of shadows and nothingness, a resurrection born out of pure friendship, and it all fell back to nothing. Was she really nothing more than a mere puppet to Magica, unable to even fight back after the mere suggestion of control.

No, that this couldn't be how everything was going to end. She might have been Magica's shadow, but even when they had been directly linked she had had enough free will to scheme against Magica, she had enough will to manipulate and deceive her into letting Lena sleepover with Webby. Magica would never have bothered pretending to be okay with Lena's plans.

Lena knew that there was really only one reality that made sense, Magica was simply doing what she always did, trying to deceive others with all the subtlety of a dart to the face. Lena knew with certainty that Magica's control over her was false, otherwise, the ritual circle would have never been needed. Magica hadn't even tried to physically restrain her as she had with Webby, which meant that Lena was a problem that Magica didn't have a solution for.

Lena wished that Webby was able to help, but Magica's incantations were still forcibly restraining her against the grass, unable to even shift her head to get a better view of what was happening around her.

"What are you thinking you, silly simpleton," Magica taunted, leaning down close to Lena, barely within reach of the ritual circles obscured chalk edges. Lena knew all too well what she needed to do, Magica needed to be stopped and nothing in their plan had changed. Magica might have known about the plans that they had made out loud if she was even capable of listening in on their conversations, but there were other options and Lena was going to make the most of them.

"I'm just thinking about whether I'm going to punch you in the face or kick you," Lena replied, locking eyes with her false aunt. If there was anyone who knew Magica's weaknesses, it would be Lena. She had spent the vast majority of her existence magically bound to the magical moron and in those years she had learned of every single button that could be pushed to manipulate the witch. If Magica thought that Lena could be manipulated, then it was time she learned that Lena could make sure that two could play at that game.

"Your plan was to take away my magic, wasn't it? So all I need to do is make sure that I have no power to give you." She stood up and faced Magica directly, trying to ignore the fact that she had forgotten her jacket and the cool breeze across the lake was irritatingly cold. "These lakes are the biggest source of Magica energy found on this plain, you know that. It's why you tried to trick me into thinking that you were going to draw your power from here using some unfortunate individual as a vessel to draw it. Did you ever think about how that energy got there, it's drawn in from those here, it's not a source of power, it's a consumer. All I need to do is play for time and we'll both soon have no power to exchange."

"You really can be a fool sometimes," Magica chuckled as she leaned down close to Lena. "You think you have this all figured out. You don't."

"Sure I do," Lena argued, Magica wasn't exactly the top tier at plans. "You only restrained Webby, you haven't even touched me. So I am the one you're afraid of."

Magica merely rolled her eyes. "I don't need to magically restrain you, stupid."

"I already control you." Lena's eyes shot open at the words that had emerged from her own mouth. She tried to at least close her mouth to stop them but found her every single muscle ignoring her instruction. She couldn't even twitch a pinkie finger. Even her eyes were taken as she felt herself looking without control, flicking back and forward under the merest whims of Magica. She couldn't even stop herself turning to face Magica's form, the crystal hanging around her neck glowing a deep purple as she channeled its power into controlling Lena. "Soon your power will be mine again. The limits of this crystal will no longer hold me back and this world will bow to me."

Please, not again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this before Nightmare on Killmotor Hill came out so there is a little discrepancy between this and canon. So it’s at this point that we diverge from canon a bit. I’ve gone through it to try and add a bit more to justify the differences.


	12. Chapter 12

Scrooge could do nothing but hope as he and Beakley rushed through the thick undergrowth towards the nearest of the five lakes, knowing all too well what they would likely be facing, an empowered and angry Magica. However, at least they had the element of surprise on their side to combat whatever rubbish she had conjured up.

"I don't need to magically restrain you, stupid." Magica's voice boomed out in the falling light. Scrooge skidden to a stop and quickly ducked behind the nearest thing he could, thankfully the edges of the seventh lake were covered in right greenery providing ample cover. He quickly glanced back and gesturing wildly for Beakley to hide as well. Naturally his efforts were pointless as the spy had already assumed cover. "Soon your power will be mine again and this world will bow to me."

He quickly peeked over the shrubbery to see Lena and Magica facing off one another, a look of sickening satisfaction plastered over Magica's face, though Lena's looked suspiciously blank. To make matters worse Webbigail appeared to have been restrained with some sort of magical drag net holding her to the ground. Magica herself was clearly expelling a significant amount of power into the air around herself and the crystal around her neck was the clear source of her new powers, ill-gotten abilities. This was most assuredly not a good situation. He had to get the girls away from Magica before anything unfortunate happened.

Thankfully Magica loved to monologue and that gave Beakley and him time to get into a better position. "We can start it like we did with Medusa to avoid collateral and push to eliminate as we did against Payton." He whispered as quietly as he could, thankful that the dense shrubbery worked as a natural sound damper. "With any luck that magical source will have a limited enough charge that will deplete and give us a window."

Beakley wordlessly agreed with a nod and quickly moved away to get into position. It was a simple pincer setup, but it should be effective against the single target. The two silently moved into position, Beakley stationed behind the two arguing, while Scrooge placed himself to be directly in front. Maximum attention was the plan and he was going to ensure he got it.

As he stood up and readied his approach, he noticed that Lena was frozen despite Magica's rather ridiculous gloating, nary a word was passing the teens lips. Scrooge knew that it was a sign of bad things to come. If there was one thing he could trust the rebellious teen to do, it would be to never allow herself to lose without a fight. To see her sitting there blankly staring off into space was not a good sign. Despite his misgivings, Scrooge knew that it was time to do what he must.

"Oy you magical moron!" Scrooge called as he stepped out into the clearing, making sure that Magica locked eyes with him. He needed her full attention for this work, however he knew the fastest way to get it was to insult her. "I'm in no mood to listen to your inane gibberish, so free the girls and leave before I show you an honest fight."

Thankfully Magica quickly rose to the bait and stalked towards Scrooge, leaving Lena and Webbigail behind her and out of view, giving Bleakley all the opportunity she needed to make a stealthy sprint from cover towards them. However as she ran the ground seemed to light up with an intense light and a split second later she found herself thrown backwards, a bright ritual circle now glowing brightly where there had once been nothing. Magica barely even bothered to look back at the additional foe, more interested in dealing with Scrooge than caring about her own defences.

"Ah, Scrooge. I didn't expect you here," Magica taunted, hovering only a few feet from his beak as her palms began to grow a savage green. Scrooge, realizing the danger, jumped backwards as the magical blast shot towards him. The magical spell missed him by mere inches and the horrible smell of burnt feathers showed that the miss may have been even closer.

Magica wasn't overly concerned by Scrooge's desperate aerobatics and merely laughed as she threw another magical blast towards him, forcing him to evade the attack again. "Would you just stay still so I can hit you?" Magica complained, throwing additional blasts towards the surprisingly agile duck.

"Fine, if that is how we're going to play I may as well cheat. Time to become my puppet." Magica's palms again took on a sickly green glow, but this time instead of magically conjured attacks Scrooge was horrified to see magical strings shoot out towards him too fast to even attempt to dodge. They drew closer and closer and Scrooge knew that this fight was about to become considerably more difficult.

The green strings shot out at him, but never reached him. Instead of embedding themselves into Scrooge's limbs, they instead froze less than an inch away before fading away to nothing. Magica and Scrooge stared in bewilderment, silence between them as they both looked at each other in confusion.

"How did you block that?" Magica broke the silence after a few tense seconds, seemingly just as unsure as Scrooge was. She attempted to throw the magical puppet strings at Scrooge again, but they once again fell back to nothing.

"I'll be honest. I have no idea how that happened." Scrooge admitted, frowning at the rather peculiar situation. Magica couldn't control him, and that gave him an opportunity. "But I know what it means." He leapt at the magical witch, making the best of the confusion to try and get some form advantage.

Magica was not prepared for the direct attack, the desperate duck's foot impacting her side painfully and throwing her to the ground. She growled at the attack before throwing another magical blast at Scrooge who was forced to back away to evade the attack.

Meanwhile Beakley was taking advantage of the distraction to map out the edges of the magical circle barrier that kept her away from her niece and Lena. She had experience with these systems in the past and knew the ins-and-outs of disabling them, but this was no simplistic magical incantations and while a fair amount of the magical work was clearly sloppy, it was still more than strong enough to keep her out.

Scrooge didn't have a chance to even see Beakley's lack of progress in her attempts to free the girls as he was more than a little preoccupied with Magica's sloppy attempts to end his life. However despite the clear lack of forward planning from his foe, her excessive magical usage more than made up for her complete inability to actually aim. Unfortunately her last attack hit the ground beneath his feet and he found himself flat on his back with a strong spell charged in Magica's palm ready to remove him from this plane of existence.

"This is how it ends for you, Scrooge." She smugly grinned at him, holding her hand out to finally rid him from existence. "It's been annoying knowing you, but finally I w-" And with that Magica was cut off by the sudden appearance of a thick bound book impacting the side of her face, throwing her off balance and causing her to accidentally release her spell into the nearby shrubbery.

"Get away from our uncle." A young voice called out that Scrooge instantly recognised, looking over he smiled as she saw Dewey standing with his hand held up victorious, beside a clearly irritated Huey glaring at him. Louie was wisely standing behind the both of them not to subtly using them as an improvised shield if Magica decided to target them. "You don't mess with us."

Magica had barely managed to turn and spool up another attack when Donald was on her, yammering angrily as he wrestled her to the ground, his fury and stubbornness a strong match for Magica's inability comprehend failure.

"Did you really have to throw the Junior WoodChuck Guidebook at her?" Huey complained as they ran in to join the fray.

"We needed something heavy to distract her and didn't see you finding any good ideas _inside_ that book." Dewey countered.

"It was either that book, or we were throwing you, be happy which one we chose." Louie finished, sometimes his brother just refused to understand that things have a certain perspective that you just needed to understand. Also it was really funny to watch him complain.

Bleakley was still struggling to get beyond the outer edges of the circle, her every attempt leading to a three foot backwards jump as she was violently pushed away by the magical barrier.

With the new assistance, Scrooge was finally able to start turning the tide in this battle to himself, taking advantage of the impressive distraction that Donald entailed to join in the fray and shove Magica to the ground. They could see the crystal on her chest growing darker as its magical energy dropped, but Magica didn't seem to see it as such as horrible situation, beginning to laugh loudly.

"What do you find so hilarious?" He snapped at her. The triplets, Donald and himself doing their best to properly restrain the violently laughing magical moron as she twisted and buckled within their hold. "We have you trapped, your magic is low. We've won!"

"You only trapped me." She smugly replied, as the gem on her chest brightened slightly as Magica channeled more energy through the depleted resource. "You might think that I'm low on power, but I am not linked with a source that will never run out. By the end of the night I will have my power back and you will all rue the day that you ever contemplated opposing me."

Thankfully Lena was finally starting to stir from her worryingly passive seat and turned to look at her with an almost smug expression on her face. On slightly unsteady feet Lena clambered over to the edge of the ring and stumbled out, putting a hand on Beakley to steady herself.

"I'm glad to see you're okay." Bleakley began as she reached up to help Lena stabilize her footing, only to have her outstretched hand slapped away as Lena's eyes grew a savage yellow and locked onto Beakley's own. "Lena?"

"Oh, sorry. Lena's not home right now. Can I take a message?" Magica's voice dripping with sarcasm as a grotesque smug grin was plastered over the young teen's face. Lena's magically charged form was no match for Beakley's years of training as she was thrown clear away from her, landing in a crumpled heap against a nearby tree, her head experiencing a blinding pain as magical energy attacked her. "You are all incredibly sentimental fools."

Scrooge watched in horror as Lena floated over to them, an immense amount of magical energy shooting off her levitating form as she grew closer to Magica, a bright purple stream of magical thread reaching out and connecting the two together. Within seconds the stream strengthened and Scrooge found himself flying through the air, alongside four other members of his family, as the magical energy merely tossed him away as if he were nothing more than a discarded tissue.

He landed near Beakley who was still trying to recover from the magical attack that had so easily grounded her. This situation had gone from bad to worse and he had no idea how he was going to save his family, much less how he was going to free Lena from the magical hold that Magica now held her in.

An idea hit him, or rather he recalled the message from the Oracle. They had said that an element of great power had to be taken from him, clearly meaning that his dime was going to be taken in this fight. But maybe they didn't mean that it was going to be taken by force, maybe he simply needed to give it to someone who could use its power. Someone who needed some pure magical protection.

Okay so it wasn't much of a plan, but it was the best idea he had and he was mostly sure it was what the Oracle wanted, either that or he was about to ensure that Magica had every bit of magic she could ever want.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to change the writing format for this chapter. There were too many characters whose intentions and views needed to be explained so I switched from Limited Third Person to an almost Omniscient Third Person style. It makes it harder to explain the thoughts on a single character, but lets you follow the actions of multiple without worrying about what action is visible to your limited view. Hopefully it worked out well enough for what I wanted to convey in this chapter. I also finished writing this chapter before 'Nightmare on Killmotor Hill' so I had to adjust a fair amount of it to avoid diverging too far from canon.


	13. Chapter 13

Lena stared in horror as she felt her magic involuntarily shoot out of her form and impact into one of the few adults who genuinely seemed to care about her. She tried with all of her mental might to steal control back from Magica, but her every attempt slammed hard against an impassable magical block that stopped her from even trying to get close. The worst part was that she could feel the steady drain of magic from her form, at this point Magica using her more as a magical battery, but she knew that as soon as the moon finished rising every singe aether of magical bound charge would become the possession of Magica.

So here she was floating over to Scrooge, a lethally charged attack sitting contained within her palm, knowing that there was absolutely nothing that she could do to stop anything from happening. Was Magica really going to force her to watch as she killed them? How had she been so utterly stupid to think that she would have even the slightest chance going up against her aunt, the one who had literally taught her everything she knew about magic. Lena realized that instead of protecting the McDucks and taking down Magica. She had played right into Magica's hands by sheer stupidity and now her only friends were going to pay the price.

"Can't you feel that wonderful energy flowing through you?" Magica crooned as she smiled at her floating puppet, Lena tried once again struggled against the controls but felt absolutely no effect. Magica's control over her was absolute. If anything, Magica seemed to find Lena's feeble attempts to regain control as something of an amusement to herself, chuckling every time Lena shoved her mental might against that impassable barrier within her own mind. "Well I suppose you can't feel much of anything in there, but that's fine. Once I'm done with these simpletons I'll make sure to properly eradicate you."

Lena watched in abject fear as Magica stood over the others, everyone who had ever bothered to actually give a damn about Lena, and yet she found herself completely unable to do anything. She was throwing herself again and again at the blockade to no avail. There was no give, no weakness, no effect, no opportunity for her to save the only ones who meant anything to her. All she could do was stand and watch as Magica threw magical restraints towards the McDucks who were standing defiantly before her. The green tentacles of magical energy stretched towards them before, to Lena's amazement, faltering and spluttering as they grew close to Scrooge. A vivid blue aura shining brightly from Scrooge's chest, the dime was protecting them.

Unfortunately, Lena elation was soon utterly destroyed as she realized that the same could not be said for the others who quickly found themselves ensnared within a magical dragnet and shoved into the same magical containment as Webby. However, the effort of holding all of them as they fought against the magical net was clearly taking a fair amount of her power to keep them effectively contained.

"I have my own protection." Scrooge taunted Magica as he stood tall in front of Magica, forming a barrier between his family and her. "This dime is more powerful than you'll ever know, and it knows how to protect its bearer from the likes of you."

Magica, however, didn't seem all that concerned by Scrooge's proclamation. "You still don't understand that I am the one in control here." Magica chuckled as the powerful purple gem sitting around her neck began to glow. "This crystal might have a finite amount of power, but it is more than enough for me to make you face one you could never defeat."

Lena watched in horror as the dark purple crystal around Magica's neck grow into violent indigo as the insane witch channeled an insane amount of magical energy through it and into Lena. She felt it flood through her body, filling every sense with deep coldness as it took command of her. She fought back as best she could, but nothing listened to her desperate mental pleading, and soon she found herself walking involuntarily over to Scrooge.

Lena stood before Scrooge hoping against hope that he had some miraculous bunny hidden in that stupidly oversized top hat. She could feel the horrible power building within herself, a dark coldness seeping into her bones as she involuntarily channeled the dark incarnations to a truly lethal level. Magica really was going to force her to kill him, and she was going to have no choice but to watch him.

"It's okay, Lena" Scrooge whispered to her, locking eyes with her as his hand loosening its grip on her arm. To see the old duck accept his fate was too much, she could feel herself crying, horribly fat tears blinding her vision as she tried to fight against Magica's final act. "None of this is your fault. Whatever happens, just know that Magica deserved to die."

Lena mentally froze as she processed his words, did he really have an insane plan to get them out of this. She only had mere seconds before the charge would fire out of herself and, dime or no dime, Scrooge would be no more. Whatever he was planning he had to do it now, and fast. Unfortunately, all he seemed to be doing was fiddling with the dime around his neck.

What was he going to do with that stupid thing, barter for his life with Magica or something? She wanted him dead, no trinket was more valuable than revenge to Magica. He had nothing that she would want more than his cooling dead body. Lena watched in surprise as he pulled the chain from around his neck, freeing the dime and removing all levels of protection from himself. Was he literally insane?

He reached out in a shaking grasp towards her, holding out the dime for her to put on. Magica was laughing in her mind, cheering that her foe was so foolishly giving up his most prized possession to a puppet of hers. She allowed Lena to reach out for the dime, the charged magical spell still holding ominously throughout her form as Lena's grasp settled around the chain.

The second she had a firm grip Scrooge jumped forward and shoved the chain around her neck, the sudden movement shoving her onto her back. It was at that moment she realized exactly what was Scrooge's plan had been. She felt the dime settle in place over her chest, the cool metallic circle sinking against her flesh as she felt it magically bond with her at a level she didn't even know existed.

She felt, rather than saw, the blue aura spread throughout her body as the dime's pure energy began to take hold on her body, wrapping itself around the darker intentioned energy stored within her from Magica's control. Lena opened her eyes for herself for the first time in minutes, fighting against Magica's control in a desperate bid to regain control over herself.

She felt Magica react and begin to return her attention back to Lena and soon she was losing control again. Lena could feel the connection strengthen as Magica threw all of her might against the magical connection to regain control, forcing her to face Scrooge again and raise her outstretched palm to rest against Scrooge's cheek. The sharp energy-burning him at her touch, the volatile mixture fighting against her own nature as she struggled to comprehend what was going on. She could feel Magica controlling her, but there was a gap, a hole in the mental wall surrounding her mind.

She threw together every skerrick of the essence of self-thought she could and threw all of her might at the minuscule gape on Magica's mental barriers. The feedback was probably one of the most horrible feelings of vicious burning as she felt her pure emotions rebound and reverberate through her own mind, growing stronger with each vicious reflection. However just as the power was growing too great for her to bear, she felt the dime on her chest begin to vibrate viciously and a feeling of serenity erupted through her body, squashing the echoing mental energy into a single point of pure magic.

She carefully prodded the point into position near the small weakness in the barrier and mentally took a deep breath to center herself. This was undoubtedly going to absolutely suck, but she knew that she couldn't hesitate. She shoved her own self against the point, feeling it rupture and tear, explosively expanding in every direction. However, the mental anguish that she expected to occur remained a mere thought as she felt the purest of magics encircle her, blocking her from the worst of the effect and centering the effect on Magica's blockade. It never stood a chance.

The magically bound link between her and Magica was the only path the magical energy could conduct, and it merrily did. However, Magica was no fool and she quickly threw her own magical energy back through the link to fight off the overloading link. Lena fell to her knees as the power pushed back against her, the feeling of the energy shaking her to her core almost falling back to pure agony as she felt her nerves scream at the horrible mistreatment. She couldn't let Magica win.

Everything was growing faint as she struggled to remain standing, throwing everything she had at Magica in a desperate attempt to destroy the hold she had over her. Her balance was shattered and she felt herself falling before she found herself caught within the warm arms of someone, but her mind was too focused on the magical attack to even comprehend anything else that was going on. Lena knew that if she dropped her attack for even a second then everything would be over, Magica will regain control over her body and this time at the cost of Lena's sanity. For her family, even if they weren't her family, she couldn't give up.

The arms holding her pulled her back to her feet, holding her tightly against themselves spreading a wonderful warmth from their close proximity. She could finally make out some of the words that they were saying, or at least enough to understand that whoever was holding her was there for her. A distant part of herself mumbled that it was probably Scrooge, but most of her was too addled to even really follow the thought to the end. Magica's magical attack was relentless, she was clearly throwing everything she had into it, and Lena could feel her energy getting overpowered. She could feel the world around herself as the dime around her neck burned brighter, a horribly sharp feeling of burning as the dime channeled energy through her, but it still wasn't enough to stop Magica's attack. Lena had power on her side, but she was still a novice at magic in comparison to Magica who knew how to properly direct her powers to a fine focus.

"I can't beat her." She sobbed, her body limp in Scrooge's arms as she felt herself falling. She opened her eyes finally and started at Scrooge's expression, a small part of her confused that he seemed almost proud of her. "I'm sorry I couldn't stop her." She felt her power waning as she struggled to retain her focus under the horribly focused magical attack as it stabbed into her soul.

Suddenly the pain just stopped.

The magic that had been so violently stabbing into her was gone and the connection was open to her. Lena's eyes snapped open to see Beakley standing with a shattered purple crystal in her grasp, Magica standing and staring in shock at the loss of her. The ex-spy had used their magical battle as the perfect distraction to get in close and remove Magica's power source in one swift move.

For Lena, that one moment remained still in an almost timeless sense before it abruptly ended. The energy that she had been throwing at Magica's attack had not merely dissipated and had instead been pushing down around Lena as she struggled to push against her, but those barriers were gone. Lena could do nothing more than watch helplessly as the powerfully lethal energies that she had barely contained were released along with the remnants of the magical link between her and Magica. It was pure energy, the difference between creation defined only by the caster's abilities, and now it was untamed, free, and completely feral.

Magica never stood a chance, the burning darkness of the magical energy tearing through her body as if it had never even existed and throwing the nothingness, that had once been Magica, into nowhere. In the blink of an eye, Magica was gone, as well as a significant amount of what had once been untouched dirt and rock, leaving a gaping ravine in the ground large enough for the Sun Chaser to crash into.

Lena felt the last of the energy leave as she was hit by a horrible amount of tiredness that seemed to stretch beyond her bones and deep into her essence.

She heard someone call out to her, but darkness took over before she could even hope to respond.

The darkness welcomed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing magic fights are much more difficult that I assumed


	14. Chapter 14

The next few hours of Lena's life passed in flashes and spinning visuals as the threads of reality drifted in and out of focus as her mind struggled to pull her thoughts together. Mentally she felt absolutely exhausted as if her mind had somehow run a marathon, which was probably an accurate enough description of what had happened. She felt a brief impression of Webby pass nearby, the feeling of her first friend leaning against her mind bringing flashes of reality to her. However, ultimately, the effort to regain consciousness was too much for Lena's near shattered mind and she let herself drift back into an ocean of darkness and sleep.

Something was covering her, something holding her down, something stopping her from moving. Lena's eyes snapped open as she shoved whatever was covering her away, panic hitting her as she struggled to get away from the restrictive materials all over her, letting out an involuntary yelp as she shoved what she now recognized as soft quilt covers away from herself. She paused in confusion and poked the quilts, realizing that they truly were nothing more than completely normal bed coverings that had not been attacking her.

She gave the room around herself a quick scan as she rubbed away the start of a new headache, finding herself in a room that she did not recognize. The walls were lined with bookshelves, which were in turn packed to the limits of their capacity with what appeared to be primarily encyclopedias, and a large modern glass window looking out into the familiar city of Duckberg. Wherever she was, it definitely was no place of Magica's, and as it was on the outskirts of the city she knew with reasonable certainty that she wasn't in the McDuck manor.

Unfortunately, this knowledge did little to help her work out where she was, how she got there, and whether she was even somewhere safe. Maybe she had been captured by another villain and she was going to have to complete some sort of daring escape, she hoped not but her history with Scrooge's family had made it a far too common occurrence. Still, she had learnt one thing, if you didn't know where you were it was almost always a good idea to do some form of investigation rather than just ignore the problem.

So with the thought of proactive investigation rattling about in her mind, Lena pulled herself out of the rather comfortable bed and walked cautiously over to the likely deceptively mundane wooden door that would reveal the truth to her. Resting her hand on the door handle, she pushed her ear against the door and was disappointed to hear absolutely nothing on the other side, no villain discussing their plan with far too much information, no supposed allies discussing whether they betray her. All she heard was a poorly maintained climate control system humming away and someone's quiet footsteps.

"Okay, Lena." She whispered to herself as she eyed the door handle, willing herself to open it and find out what horrible situation she'd gotten herself involved in again. "You've got to find out where you are. You can do this."

Her hand shook as she gritted her teeth, before yanking the door wide open with a crash, to find a rather confused Violet walking in the connected hallway carrying a tray of food. Lena paused and looked at Violet in confusion, what was she doing here.

"Oh, it's good to see you're awake," Violet told her as she stepped past Lena and into the bedroom, placing the food down on a small study desk that was in a nook between two of the bookshelves lining the room's walls. "You can have my breakfast and I'll go get some more for myself."

Lena cautiously sat down at the pro-offered chair and stared at Violet in confusion, trying to get her mind to follow what was going on and why Violet was there. Violet passed over some cutlery and went to leave the bedroom, however, Lena couldn't just let Violet leave with such an empty explanation.

"Wait!" She called, grabbing onto Violet's arm a fair bit harder than she intended if the frown from her was anything to go by. She grimaced and relaxed her grip slightly, unwilling to completely release her. "Vi, where are we and where are the others?"

Violet raised an eyebrow and gave her a look of the barest element of interest. "The others are at McDuck manor, and you're in my bedroom. Eat and then we'll talk, okay?"

Lena nodded, still rather confused but willing to accept that there wasn't some horrible kidnapping plot if Violet was so unconcerned. She hadn't spent much time with her, but she knew that Violet didn't entirely grasp the concept of hiding the truth and preferred to just say everything as clearly as possible no matter the intended audience. So if Violet acted as if nothing was wrong, then in Violet's opinion there was nothing wrong to be concerned about.

"Good. I'll contact the others so they know that you've finally woken." Violet told her plainly as she stepped out of the room, disappearing far too quickly for Lena to even have a chance to ask how long she'd been asleep. No matter, Lena knew that she would be far too willing to answer her questions later.

Lena looked back at her breakfast, only now finally getting a chance to properly see the feast that Violet had brought in, it was clearly far more than anyone person could have for a meal. There were two entire thick pieces of toast and all of them were covered in an unhealthy layer of butter, there was even a glass of milk to wash it down. She hadn't seen this level of excess compared to her own breakfasts since she'd last stayed over at Webby's home. At the time she had thought that the whole millionaire part had been why the meals had always been so large, but she was beginning to wonder if Duckberg as a whole just loved large meals.

Grinning she grabbed the first slice and bit into it, she normally didn't get to have heated food and she was going to enjoy this as much as she could. Pancakes would still be her favorite breakfast, but this was also pretty good, the toast seemed a lot better than what she had managed to scrounge up in the past as the butter tasted a lot less sour than she was used to, she'd have to work out where they had gotten it from.

Lena had barely started on the second piece before the bedroom door opened again to admit Violet, who was still talking on a cell phone balancing between her ear and shoulder as she struggled to carry in the second tray of food. Lena tried to reach out to help but Violet shot her a look and gestured that she should remain seated.

"She's definitely awake and is going to have a lot of questions for you," Violet told whoever was on the other side of the phone call, Lena presumed it was either Webby or Scrooge. "You could talk to her on the ph-. Oh okay. I'll see you soon."

"Was that Webby?" Lena winced internally at the almost pleading tone that slipped into her voice. She didn't mind Violet, but she really wanted to know what was going on and Webby was probably the only one who both knew what had happened and was actually willing to tell her what it was.

"Scrooge, but she overheard anyway," Violet told her, thankfully not mentioning Lena's abrupt outburst. "They will be over in a few minutes, but I'll try to answer what questions I can. I know you have a lot of questions you want to ask."

"There are a lot of things I want to know, but I honestly don't know where to even begin," Lena muttered, putting her toast back down as her appetite abandoned her as a feeling of deep uncertainty settled over her. Was everything really just sorted out now? Was she just supposed to head back to the amphitheater or something now? Scrooge only told her to stay at the manor as she had information on Magica, was she even welcome back there after the mess she caused. She'd promised to try and save his family, then threw his family back into danger the first chance she got because she was being stupid.

"It's okay if you don't," Violet told her, seemingly unconcerned with the lack of response from Lena. "Magical exhaustion likely leads to difficulty handling mental tasks. If you want you can go back to sleep for a while."

Lena didn't even turn to Violet as she contemplated the offer. Sleep did sound rather welcoming, but what she really wanted wasn't some short term comfort. She wanted to know what she was supposed to do with her life, and that likely wasn't the type of question that Violet could just answer. "I'm fine with being awake," She mumbled, pushing away the plate of food that sat before her taunting her. "I've probably slept enough for a year."

"I suppose you did sleep for two days." Violet agreed before biting into her own breakfast.

"Did you say two days?!" Lena asked, if she'd spent two days asleep there was no telling where Magica had escaped to or what she had planned next. She could be on her way here that very second and no one seemed all that concerned. Had Scrooge not told Violet of the danger she was putting herself into? "Shouldn't we be at the manor or hiding in some underground bunker or something? What if she comes after me?"

"Who would come after you?" Violet asked, clocking her head to one side in the closest thing that Lena had ever seen her approach confusion, though she somehow looked more contemplative than lost. "You're safe here, Scrooge promised me that no one was after you."

"He lied" Lena cut in, she couldn't believe the sheer self-importance that Scrooge had displayed putting Violet and her family in danger just so he didn't have to deal with Lena. "I can't stay here. When she comes I have to be gone or you will all be in trouble."

"You will stay and rest, there is no one after you." Violet attempted to placate Lena, but she knew better. Magica had to be out there bidding her time and it was only a matter of time before she came for her. She had to get out of here before she put Webby's friend in even more danger, no matter how much she really wanted to curl up in that stupidly soft bed and nap away the next century. "I'm not going to just let you leave when you need time to recover"

"You don't get it. I have to get out of here before Magica returns.!" Lena snapped, pushing Violet away from here and moving to leave the room, before been stopped by a tight hold from Violet.

"Magica is not coming to get you," Violet told her, pushing Lena back into the seat and nudging her food back in front of her as she tried to placate her. "Scrooge promised me that Magica is gone and is not going to be coming after you."

"How?" Lena asked, how could Magica just disappear like that. Sure they had fought in an extremely dangerous magical fight, but to hear that she was gone just didn't make sense. Magica was a horrible person that Lena hated with every fiber of her existence, but for her to just be gone didn't make any sense. "She can't just be gone."

"I don't have the full story, Scrooge said he wanted to be the one to tell you what happened," Violet explained, her voice dropping low. "All I can say is that whatever happened had some sort of final consequences for Magica and now you're safe. I may be curious to know what happened, but the facts tell me enough to know that you're safe."

"How can you know that we'll be sa-" Lena began before a sharp knock on the door interrupted her.

Like all adults, Scrooge knew that the responsible thing to do before entering a room was to always give a sharp knock to announce your presence, but as he was also the richest duck in the world he didn't have the social cues necessary to recognize that the typical person would then wait for the room's occupants to invite them in. Instead, he knocked on the door and immediately shoved it open, completely defeating the entire purpose behind knocking in the first place. He was rich, not polite.

"Ah, there you are lass. It's good to see you up and awake." Scrooge began, before being shoved out of the way by a clearly overeager Webby who didn't even give Lena time to put down her toast before she was wrapped up in a tangle of Webby and tackled to the ground. "Ah, yes. Webbigail is also happy to see you."

"I can kind of tell" Lena groaned under the weight of Webby, thankfully Webby soon noticed her predicament and pulled herself off her downed friend and let her breath again. "So, why are you here? Shouldn't you be out trying to stop Magica!"

Scrooge and Webby exchanged a rather pointed look, Scrooge looking rather uncomfortable as if he wanted to discuss something rather distasteful. "Magica is no longer a threat and she never will be again." Scrooge began, clearly cautiously choosing his words. Lena knew that they were trying to keep something important from her, but as for what that was she had no idea. Whatever it was she knew that she had to get to the bottom of it, Magica was her responsibility and she owed it to the McDucks to make sure that her stupid aunt never hurt them again. "You don't need to w-"

"As long as Magica is alive, she will always be a threat!" Lena interrupted, she knew better than to hope that anything other than death would stop her. "I can't just calm down and ignore that this very second she could be plotting to destroy all of us."

"Magica is dead" Webby blurted out, shooting a look of apology at Scrooge. "Sorry, I know you said not to tell her just yet, but she deserves to know."

"Webbigail..." Scrooge sighed before waved at her to continue. "You may as well tell her everything."

"How can you just know that Magica is dead, she's escaped before," Lena told Webby as she wiggled back to a more comfortable sitting position from underneath the overactive duck, not even trying to pull herself out of the iron tight hug that Webby kept around her.

"We saw her die," Scrooge replied, kneeling next to them and resting what he likely intended to be a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It was no magical trick. When Beakley severed the connection between Magica and the soul crystal that she was channeling, Magica was left with no magical energy. However, you still had your own power. Everything rebounded back on Magica, she didn't survive, that it something can say with certainty."

"It hit her after the crystal was destroyed?" Lena asked carefully, knowing all too well exactly how much magical mana had been sitting between then near the end of their fight. "Not before?"

"The crystal was shattered and then it hit her," Scrooge clarified. At his quiet words, Lena felt a heavyweight suddenly lift away.

"Haha, eat it Magica. She said that I was powerless, well I showed her up at her own game."" Lena grinned, letting out a chuckle. However, her elation was somewhat muted but the rather odd looks that the others were giving her, okay so maybe celebrating killing someone was not the reaction they were looking for. "Oh don't look at me like that. I'm not happy about killing someone. Magica's just a special case. She's tormented me for years if anyone gets to not feel guilty for killing her it's me."

Lena winced at the rather harsh tone she ended on. She hadn't meant to be quite that brusque, but honestly, she could not bring herself to care that she had brought about Magica's end. She deserved it and Lena was not planning on feeling guilty about getting rid of her. Scrooge clearly didn't agree with her position if his hard expression was anything to go by, but Violet and Webby both seemed to not mind so much. Personally, Lena was just happy to finally know that she was free from Magica's influence and could try and live her own life, though that did bring its own questions.

"Well, this has been fun, I guess I'd better get going," Lena told them, looking for a convenient way to get out of the awkwardness that had filled the room. Even Lena knew that admitting to being happy to have murdered someone in cold blood would make the others feel a bit uncomfortable, but she had rather missed the mark for how uncomfortable she would feel. "Thanks for letting me sleepover."

She went to pull herself to her feet, but Webby stubbornly refused to release her grasp. "Come on Webby, I can't stay on the floor for the rest of my life." She complained as she rolled her eyes, making a half-hearted effort to remove her.

"No. You're not just going to leave like that." Webby protested, tightening her grip to an uncomfortable level. "We can't let you just leave."

"You won't let me," Lena's eyes narrowed as she repeated the words darkly, she pulled herself out of Webby's grip and stood up to leave. "I've spent my whole life being told what I can and can't do. You think for even a second that I would let any of you contr-"

"Albert's bulb, you are dense." Violet cut in bluntly standing in front of her and shoving her back into the seat, Lena had never seen Violet this driven. "They aren't saying that they are going to control your life or enslave you like Magica, and you know it. They are trying to offer you a home to live in. So stop trying to run away, grow a backbone and go live in a mansion where you'll have every opportunity provided to you."

There was a silence as they all stared at Violet, wondering how such an outburst had escaped from the small girl.

"Violet is mostly correct," Scrooge cut in as he cautiously stepped closer. "I am offering you a place in my family if you want it, but I wasn't about to offer you a place in the manor. That place has been a magnet for trouble for years, and after everything that has happened, I thought you might want to stay somewhere a little more calming. You'll always be welcome at the manor, of course. I just thought you might want a change of pace."

"They were okay with it?" Violet asked, actually somewhat smiling for once, though it looked ridiculously smug as she had never really gotten the hang of expressing emotions. Lena didn't even get a chance to react before Violet pulled her into a brief hug. "Well, then the offer had changed a little."

"What offer, Vi?" Lena asked curiously.

Violent held out her hand to Lena, a clear offer for a handshake. "My parents have decided that I need to socialize more with others, and Scrooge has decided that you need someone to help you learn about your magical abilities in a safer environment. Do you want to stay with my family?"

Lena froze, whatever direction she had thought that this would have gone, this most assuredly was not one that she even ever considered. She'd thought that they would have demanded that she stay away, or that they would have just never bothered to address her and she'd spend the rest of her life living on her own. A small part had dreamed that Webby would let her stay forever in some sort of endless sleepover, though it never really made sense. To just find herself being offered the chance to join a real and normal family was something that never even occurred to her.

"I don't know what to say," Lena mumbled, she really didn't know what to say. "Are you sure you're okay with this? My magic isn't that safe and I'm not exactly normal."

"Of course I am," Violet said as she pulled Lena into a gentle embrace. "This hidden world of magic and relics is one that I am compelled to know about. I don't care about normal. I care about you."

Lena returned the embrace, enjoying the chance to hug someone who wasn't trying to remove every molecule of air from her lungs. She loved Webby like a sister, but she really wished that the girl would learn about the limits of a conventional body. She looked up to see Webby giving her a friendly wave goodbye as Scrooge pulled her out of the room in a clear effort to give them some level of privacy.

"So, Vi. What do you want to find out first?" Lena asked, smiling comfortably as she sat beside Violet on her bed, loosening her embrace to charge a small amount of magical energy in her palm. "Want to test out some levitation, or maybe some transfiguration?"

Violent pondered the question for a few seconds. "I was more curious in what magical properties Scrooge's dime gave you when it magically bonded with your chest."

"His dime did what?" Lena pulled down her collar and stared at the circle of metal half embedded in her chest. "Could this day get any weirder?"

"Probably not," Violent responded, thought Lena could tell that she was clearly still thinking it over. "Actually before we get into the magical research, maybe you should meet my parents?"

Lena frowned. "Are you sure they are okay with me staying here?"

Violent shrugged. "Honestly, you could be a literal demon cursed to bring eternal darkness, and they'll still just be happy that I'm actually talking to someone instead of reading for a change."

"Good to know." Lena lent back on the bed with her hands resting comfortably under her head and smiled. Life was good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are finally finished.  
This chapter did not want to end. It actually ended up about 60% longer than any other chapter and made it difficult to stick to my plan to release a chapter every 2 days,  
This entire story really got away from me in scope and direction, but I hope the end result was a good one.


End file.
